Housing Bubble

In the wake of China's unprecedented attempt to rescue its collapsing equity markets, Deutsche Bank is out with a history lesson for Beijing where officials can learn some "sweet and sour" lessons from the crash of '87. 

Nobody apparently learned much from the whole bubble-bust affair as banks and financial firms are at it again, this time in corporate debt. The artificial suppression of default, in no small part to perceptions of those bank reserves under QE (just like perceptions of balance sheet capacity pre-crisis), has turned junk debt into the vehicle of choice for yet another cycle of “reach for yield.” In the past two bubble cycles, we see how monetary policy creates the conditions for them but also in parallel for their disorderly closure. It isn’t money that the FOMC directs but rather unrealistic, to the extreme, expectations and extrapolations. Once those become encoded in financial equations, the illusion becomes real supply.

Despite endless assurances that the Greek debt crisis is contained, the reality is that the ragin' contagion of debt crises will spread not just to other deeply indebted nations but to the mercantilist economies that depend on selling goods to borrowers. Strip out the borrowing, and you strip out most of the customers for German, Dutch and Chinese goods.

Trillions upon trillions in “stimulus” and the FOMC is left, pathetically, fighting for the distinction of “it’s not as bad as it looks.” That would seem to make this the most costly economic age ever conceived, with global implications that are just now starting to be felt as whatever faith was leftover from 2008, wrong or right, wears off all over the world. That is a highly combustible deficiency, since the longer the global economy remains disorientated the more likely it is to experience not just recession but, since this is all still so leveraged (even more poorly this time), something potentially worse.

What is the reason for the non-existant rebound? Simple: the following chart comparing total new home sales and the median new home sales price explains it.

Prepare to laugh. A lot.

Will we never learn...

Last week the government reported personal income and spending for April. After months of blaming non-existent consumer spending on cold weather, shockingly occurring during the Winter, the captured mainstream media pundits, Ivy League educated Wall Street economist lackeys, and Keynesian loving money printers at the Fed have run out of propaganda to explain why Americans are not spending money they don’t have. The corporate mainstream media is now visibly angry with the American people for not doing what the Ivy League propagated Keynesian academic models say they should be doing. An economy built upon the consumption of iGadgets, Cheetos, meat lovers stuffed crust pizza, and slave labor produced Chinese baubles, along with the production of enough arms to blow up the world ten times over, and the doling out of trillions to the non-productive class, is doomed to fail.

In recent years, home price indices have seemed to proliferate. Measuring home prices has taken on an urgency beyond the real estate industry because for many, home price growth has become something of an indicator of the economy as a whole. If home prices are going up, it is assumed, “the economy” must be doing well. Indeed, we are encouraged to relax when home prices are increasing or holding steady, and we’re supposed to become concerned if home prices are going down. This is a rather odd way of looking at the price of a basic necessity.

Unsold new condos spike to all-time record. Industry in denial.

With The Philly Fed admitting QE has been the driver of inequality in the USA and the Kiwis slashing rates unexpectedly, the fact that Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens uttered the following is even more crucial. "I think it's a social problem," Stevens told the Economic Society of Australia, adding ominously, "I think some of what's happening is crazy," specifically pointing to Sydney property prices as an example. No matter where we look around the world, Central Bankers appear to be exercising their honesty glands about the impact of their policies. However Stevens can't help himself at the end, noting "we remain open to the possibility of further policy easing."

The current bubbles are so large and fragile that air is already coming out with rates still locked at zero. However, unlike prior bubbles that pricked in response to Fed rate hikes, the current bubble may be the first to burst without a pin. It appears the Fed fears this and will do everything it can to avoid any possible stress. That is why Fed officials will talk about raising rates, but keep coming up with excuses why they can’t. Larry Lindsey will be right that the markets will eventually force the Fed to raise rates even more abruptly if it waits too long to raise them on its own. But he grossly underestimates the magnitude of the rise and the severity of the crisis when that happens. It won’t just be the end of a raging party, but the beginning of the worst economic hangover this nation has yet experienced.

20 years ago this month, Bill Clinton unveiled the National Home Ownership Strategy, a 100-point plan designed to drive the home ownership rate in America to all-time highs. The plan succeeded — and now it has unraveled completely.

"Qualified households will be unable to move from renting to owning as housing-cost burdens, slow wage growth and student debt make it harder to cobble together even a modest down payment," WSJ says. As homeownership becomes increasingly unrealistic, demand for rentals will only increase, driving further increases in the cost of rental housing. The question then becomes this: what happens when a family that can't afford a down payment can no longer afford to pay the rent?

Something happened in late 2008 that has skewed the recovery towards the wealthiest Americans.