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There's a three-year inventory of homes in foreclosure for sale, and that's devastating home prices. Las Vegas has so many foreclosures that 53% of all the homes sold in Nevada are in some stage of foreclosure, according to a report from RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed properties. Foreclosures represent 45% of sales in California and Arizona, and 28% of all existing home sales during the first three months of 2011. "This is very bad for the economy," said Rick Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac. What's more, the homes are selling at steep discounts, especially so-called REOs, bank-owned homes that...

A day is coming when the rest of the world will decide that it no longer has faith in U.S. dollars or in U.S. debt. When that day arrives, the game will be over. Traditionally, two of the biggest things that the U.S. economy has had going for it were the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries. The U.S. dollar has been the default reserve currency of the world for decades. All over the globe it was seen as a strong, stable currency that was desirable for international trade. U.S. government debt has long been considered the "safest debt" in the...

A day is coming when the rest of the world will decide that it no longer has faith in U.S. dollars or in U.S. debt. When that day arrives, the game will be over. Traditionally, two of the biggest things that the U.S. economy has had going for it were the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries. The U.S. dollar has been the default reserve currency of the world for decades. All over the globe it was seen as a strong, stable currency that was desirable for international trade. U.S. government debt has long been considered the "safest debt" in...

Nearly half of Americans say that they definitely or probably couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days, according to new research, raising concerns about the financial fragility of many households. In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Annamaria Lusardi of the George Washington School of Business, Daniel J. Schneider of Princeton University and Peter Tufano of Harvard Business School used data from the 2009 TNS Global Economic Crisis survey to document widespread financial weakness in the U.S. and other countries. The survey asked a simple question, “If you were to face a $2,000 unexpected expense...

Preparing Your Investments For An Inflationary Future By Eric Fry 05/26/11 Laguna Beach, California – Let the boxing match begin!…In the near corner, we find deflation, with its furious fists of debt liquidation and credit contraction… And in the far corner, we’ve got Ben Bernanke’s printing press, with its menacing inflationary uppercut. Inflation will win this contest eventually, but the match might go the full 12 rounds. Deflation is no slouch. He packs a mean punch. Borrowers of all types – from single-family mortgage-holders to national governments – are defaulting on their loans…or moving rapidly in that direction. As the...

I believe that the sine qua non of the financial crisis was U.S. government housing policy, which led to the creation of 27 million subprime and other risky loans -- half of all mortgages in the United States -- which were ready to default as soon as the massive 1997-2007 housing bubble began to deflate. If the U.S. government had not chosen this policy path -- fostering the growth of a bubble of unprecedented size and an equally unprecedented number of weak and high-risk residential mortgages -- the great financial crisis of 2008 would never have occurred...

The United States is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline and it is getting really hard to deny it. Over the past year I have included literally thousands of depressing statistics in my articles about the U.S. economy. I have done this in order to make an overwhelming case that the U.S. economy is in deep decline and is dying a little bit more every single day. Until we understand exactly how bad our problems are we will never be willing to accept the solutions. The truth is that our leaders have absolutely wrecked the greatest economic...

The interaction of six government policies explains the timing, severity, and global impact of the financial crisis. Today we see how utterly mistaken was the Milton Friedman notion that a market system can regulate itself. We see how silly the Ronald Reagan slogan was that government is the problem, not the solution . . . I wish Friedman were still alive so he could witness how his extremism led to the defeat of his own ideas. — Economist Paul Samuelson (January 2009)The people on Wall Street still don't get it. They're still puzzled—why is it that people are mad at the...

The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice. Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a "double-dip" recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term...

David Rosenberg has outlined, in his latest letter, the 13 reasons with this so-called recovery is actually a depression. Rosenberg sums it up like this: This is what a depression is all about — an economy that 33 months after a recession begins, with zero policy rates, a stuffed central bank sheet, and a 10% deficit-to-GDP ratio, is still in need of government help for its sustenance. Each one of these 13 reasons is more damning and highlights the true state of the economy: caught in a liquidity trap with little way out.

<p>Labor Secretary Hilda Solis touted administration progress on getting Americans back to work Friday, even as the latest job numbers showed unemployment ticking up to 9.6 percent.</p> <p>"I think the good news is that, again, the strides that we have made in this administration to put recovery first and foremost is happening," Solis said on MSNBC. "It's slow."</p>

As they used to say on Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not the same." The current recession "is not like the others." At 33 months it is already more than three times longer than the average length of the other ten recessions we've had since WWII. There are no clear signs it will be ending anytime soon. Glimmers of a recovery appear from time to time, but most indicators remain depressed and many are worsening. On balance, the outlook is more negative than positive. Not since the Great Depression...

Even before there was an Obama administration, there was the hue and cry for the government to "do something" to stimulate the economy reeling from the Chris Dodd Bear Market and Recession. But there also were voices warning that stimulating the economy the way Barack Obama and congressional Democrats intended — massive government borrowing to fund massive spending on government employees and infrastructure; government interference in commerce; microscopic interest rates — was failure waiting to happen. Those voices recalled how Japan stimulated its economy 10 times after the credit bubble burst in 1990. Each time, Japan ramped up government spending...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve has little power left to lift the economy out of its rut. Congress, with an election looming, has no appetite for more stimulus. Shoppers are reluctant to spend, and businesses are slow to hire. Let's face it: There is no easy or imminent fix for the flagging recovery.

That noise you hear, that's the sound of helicopters in the distance. While they may be in the distance, they are closer than they have been in quite some time, and chief pilot Ben Bernanke is leading the squadron. We are now coming up on three months of very anemic economic growth, so limp many economists fear we are closer than we have ever been to a double dip. GDP registered a paltry 2.4% in the second quarter, a very disappointing number, especially after the economy has fallen so far despite the huge spending in the stimulus plan.The only real...

So, central bankers are beginning to wonder if the US can pull off "another Volcker." Even Paul Volcker himself, who is still alive, doubts it. Today, too many people owe too much money and too many political favors. Put up rates to 18% today? Unthinkable. Cut 10% off government spending? Impossible. But don't worry about it. Now, we're not threatened by inflation...but by depression! It's fighting the depression that makes people worry. Smart investors and shrewd central bankers are afraid the depression-fighters will go too far...that they don't really know what they're doing. Ben Bernanke is up for re-appointment. "Bernanke...

BEIJING – President Barack Obama says he's worried that spending too much money to help revive the economy could undermine a fragile U.S. recovery and throw the economy into a double-dip recession. That's when the economy begins to recover briefly from a recession only to be dragged back under. Obama told Fox News in an interview Wednesday that his administration is weighing tax breaks that could encourage businesses to begin hiring again.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US unemployment rate jumped to 10.2 percent in October as 190,000 jobs were shed, the government said Friday in data highlighting ongoing struggles of an economy emerging from recession. The Labor Department report, seen as one of the best indicators of economic momentum, showed a rise in the jobless rate, up from 9.8 percent in September, to the highest since 1983. But the number of jobs lost narrowed to the lowest level in over a year. The jobless rate shot above the key 10 percent barrier for the first time since June 1983, even though the...

Last night this writer sat in the coffee shop of an unnamed bookstore in Pasadena sipping a decaf coffee while surfing the net on a lap top computer. An older lady sitting at the table next to me was consuming a bottle of Ensure, a meal in a bottle, which she brought into the book store with her. No doubt this was a substitute for dinner. Other customers bought their $5 lattes and ice blended coffee drinks. A male acquaintance of this lady happened by and said hello. A conversation struck up between them. The man related how he was...

This article will identify the root causes of what is coming to be known as, The Great Recession. Certainly, this economic downturn, thus far, isn't anything nearly as dire, statistically, as The Great Depression, which sported 25% unemployment. However, this is easily the worst recession since the early 80's, and could end up being worse than that one if trends continue and the government doesn't get out of the way.