If you read the financial blogs linked on essential websites like Ml-implode.com, you get a much more sobering picture. According to the RGE Monitor, we are in the THIRD year of a housing recession—did you know that?
They report: “We are in the third year of the U.S. housing recession and the bottom does not seem to be in sight yet. Housing starts (and completions) are falling but not yet fast enough to offset the sharper fall in demand (home sales) and therefore to insure a fast absorption of the rising home inventories that keep putting downward pressure on prices.”
Do you realize the extent of the housing collapse? The number of vacant homes reached a record high of 18.6 million units, which was a 1 million increase in the past 12 months with a record 4.1 million vacant homes for rent, and the rental vacancy rate rising to 10.1%.
1 out of 194 US households are now in foreclosure. Housing prices are falling with expectations in some quarters that they will drop a further 20%
Translation for a society in which realty is considered reality: This is an ongoing disaster with worse to come.
Patrick Net reports:
“Salaries cannot pay for current house prices. This means house prices must keep falling or salaries must rise much faster. You probably noticed that your salary is not rising much, and that inflation in food, energy, and medical care has been very high. This leaves less money available to pay for housing.”
Another website, Minranville, sees not just a subprime crisis but a deepening consumer consumption crisis as credit gets tighter. Already the overall growth rate has fallen to 0.6% as consumer spending freezes.
”It’s important to recognize that with each passing day, as credit is tightened and unemployment grows, more and more asset classes and population groups will be affected. And you need only look at the news from BMW or last week’s earnings report from Harley-Davidson and Starbucks to see that consumers can no longer afford their aspirations.”
Another site, Denninger.net, sounds angry, a sign of the ugly mood that is starting to go public as the only upturn appears to be a rise in the lack of consumer confidence:
“If you're operating under the premise that the losses have been (mostly) recognized and we are now going to see "write ups" somewhere down the road, you're more than wrong.
You're delusional.”
Are we delusional or just distracted by campaign circuses? Are we even aware of the link between the housing crisis and the food crisis?
Mike Whitney argues: “The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe....
So what now? Will the desperation so many people feel go inwards or outwards? Here are two stories on two tendencies likely to merge:
AP: A man upset over thousands of dollars in fees owed to a condominium association brandished a gun and took two association employees hostage before he was killed by a SWAT team, authorities said. Deputies "were screaming at him to put the gun down, but he didn't seem to be paying attention," said Ross Torman, 30, a resident who watched the standoff from his nearby balcony. "He just put that gun right to his head and that's when they began to shoot."
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