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

According to a Reuters survey of private economists, 620,000 job losses are projected for April. The Labor Department report is due out on Friday at 8:30 AM EST. In just the past five months, nearly 3 million jobs have been lost and the "real" unemployment rate has surged to 15.6%. The problem fo...

According to the NAR and their March existing home sales report, home value declines eased but there remains continued downward pressure on home values due to the supply and demand imbalance. Here is what the year over year percentage change in the median home value has looked like over the past ...

For the past several months I have been trying to find a meaningful relationship between NAR's pending home sales index and existing home sales, I have been unable to.  The index is an indication of the number of properties that are currently under contract and are expected to close within 30-60 ...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Citigroup may need to raise an additional $10 billion in capital due to the findings of the Federal Reserve's stress tests. The results of the stress tests are due to be published this Thursday.  Not surprisingly, from what has been leaked so far, it appe...

How many times have we heard either politicians, talking heads, or CEOs say, "we need to get credit moving again"? As I have written about before the accepted philosophy has been that once we fixed the banking system and gave the banks enough capital, or guaranteed enough of their loans, or when ...

According to the National Association of REALTORS, the pending home sales index inched up 3.2% from last month and 1.1% from last year to 84.6. The index is an indication of the number of properties that are currently under contract and are expected to close within 30-60 days. As I have written a...

The Senate defeated the proposed mortgage cram down bill 51-45 on Thursday, falling 15 votes short for a bill that would have allowed judges to modify home loans through bankruptcy. Specifically it would have allowed judges to either lower the interest rate and or reduce the principal on loans fo...

That is the question posed by CNBC's Senior Features Editor Albert Bozzo.  The headline of his report is, "US Economy Could Recover Much Sooner Than Expected". His rationale is, "Among the reasons for the new optimism: a significant easing of the credit crunch, improvement in consumer spending, a...

According to an article by Reuters, "The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its final index of confidence climbed to 65.1 in April from 57.3 in March. That was the highest since September 2008 and the biggest one-month increase since October 2006."  This is certainly good ne...

The Commerce Department announced on Wednesday that the 1st quarter GDP declined by -6.1%; this was larger than the -4.9% change that many economists had predicted.  It is the third straight quarter for GDP declines. And while Wall St. blindly celebrated the data and the fact that consumer spendi...