Posted on 04/21/2023 5:48:42 AM PDT by Kaiser8408a
Former Federal Reserve Chair and current Treaury Secretary Janet “The Evil Hobbit” Yellen has created numerous catestrophic messes thanks to Fed policy errors, both at The Fed and now as Treasury Secretary.
For example, the massive almost hysterical overreaction of The Fed under Powell (following Yellen’s Reign of Error) to the Covid economic shutdowns resulted in a massive surge in M2 Money growth [green line].
The result? REAL US housing prices soared while REAL averge hourly wage growth was negative for 24 straight months. THAT is the Fed error induced housing policy blunder. But it did increase the US homeownership rate (blue line).
A massive spike in REAL home prices coupled with 24 straight months of negative REAL hourly wages is hitting millenials hard. In fact, millennials are the slowest generation to hit 50% homeownership rate.
In fact, according to Apartment List, millenial rents are giving up on homeownership.
Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen (German for “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” – Karl Marx.
Remember, the US got into trouble in the early 2000s by pushing homeownership and lowering credit standards for lower income households. It was a Clinton-era policy error called “The National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream.” There is a video of then HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo (yes, THAT Andrew Cuomo) saying that the US should risk higher mortgage defaults so low income households could buy a home … then default. Frankly, Washington DC should get out of the housing business altogether. But nooooo. They are now going to make things even worse.
Janet Yellen: The most terrifying person in the world!
(Excerpt) Read more at confoundedinterest.net ...
People need to wake up to the fact that leftist “errors” are not errors but purposeful actions.
The 30% of income housing rule became common in the 1950s.
Back then about half the Los Angeles Basin was orange groves. Orange County deserved its name.
By the 1970s most of those orange groves were replaced by housing.
When the Washington Beltway was built, the suburbs of DC pretty much were contained inside of it. Nowadays, the suburbs of DC extend to Leesburg and Fredericksburg and beyond.
Housing in prime metros now carries a massive location premium.
The 30% rule is a 70-year old anachronism.
Also building codes are much more stringent 70 years later. My parents bought a house in 1954 and it was junk. My uncle Tom built a proper house for them in 1957. The cost was $17,000. Prices overall are up about 15-fold. My uncle’s house next door last year sold for $210,000, up only about 12-fold because it needed to be upgraded.
You’re right about interest rates but it’s not all relative.
I’m not trying to fight with you, but “It’s all relative” is should be the motto of the Baby Boomer generation. And life’s not all relative.
I agree that there’s nasty entitlement nowadays.
But that doesn’t change the fact the Bill Clinton basically destroyed the country financially.
It’s the boomer parents who co-signed those loans that have been crying. Honestly, each generation has a mooch class. And I remember refinancing to a 7% loan and thinking how lucky I was.
Things are going to cost more because health care costs far more today. In 1960, a hospital room cost about $29/day.
You have to pay for now very expensive PPACA health care cost coverage in the things you buy, including breakfast cereal and housing.
When you buy a house, you are paying not only for plywood and concrete blocks, you are paying for high-cost PPACA mandated coverage prescription drugs for workers and their family members and workman’s compensation hospital care for injured workers. My former neighbor Bob was injured on the job about 10 years ago. His hospital bill was $106,000.
On one hand: “You will own NOTHING and be happy.”
On the other hand: “Everybody SHOULD OWN a home.”
The only consistent thing about Marxist lunatics is their inconsistency.
But you do it anyway because that's what Republicans and conservatives do...eat their own.
Democrats love folks like you.
The main financial damage Bill Clinton did was overpriced tech stocks, pension fund draining and lifetime SS ‘disability’ payouts for people far healthier than me.
Even my dyed-in-the-wool Democratic neighbor Connie acknowledges how well some of her relatives rip off SS.
Trump and Biden together did about $5 trillion in added federal debt supposedly on account of COVID.
No, I’m only realistic about the destroyed country being left behind and what it will take to fix it if it’s even possible. And not every Baby Boomer is responsible.
“College, cars, homes, most things were cheap for Baby Boomers.”
My 1982 mortgage on a two-bedroom Reston, Virginia terrace house was about $1103/month.
That’s about $4500/month adjusted for inflation.
Let's face a few facts here:
During the GW Bush Presidency, the Republican Party became the party of Big Government after years of railing against it. Big Government became acceptable to them as long as they were at the reigns of power. That's an undeniable fact and one of the Conservative movement's biggest critcism of the Republican Party.
The expansion of Government under GW Bush is undeniable.
Same as it's undeniable under Obama, who himself put Government expansion on Steroids.
As for President Trump, we had a chance to finally reign in Government regulation and overreach and yet the underestimation of the deep state did that agenda in. Covid came along, the checkbook came out, trillions of dollars printed and all for what? Look where we are. How many of us here on this forum who have at least a basic understanding of economics knew all that free money printing wasn't going to end well, because it didn't and couldn't address the supply side of things due to everything being "shut down" to "stop the spread", and what a f'ing joke that b.s. was too. Too much money, WAY TOO MUCH MONEY chasing too few goods and services = INFLATION. In this case, inflation higher than any point in the last 40-50 years. Who didn't see this coming? Dummies. That's who.
And now Biden. What an unmitigated disaster that we're probably never going to recover from. He's so bad, I don't even know where to start other than by asking a simple question: If you were out to completely destroy the United States of America and drive the final nail into our coffin, what would you do differently? Answer: Nothing.
So here's the bottom line: there's so much more that goes into the situation we're in, than beyond simply "blaming boomers" for it. That's a complete cop-out and ignores so many different factors, some of which I've barely managed to even scratch the surface of above. It's impossible for me to accurately summarize everything that led us up to this point without writing the equivalent of Tolstoy's War and Peace and the Holy Bible combined.
So stop it with the blaming boomers crap. It's dishonest, disingenuous and ignores the fact that at the end of the day, this is the bullshit people voted for, and we got the government we deserved. An unfortunate reality and true.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.
Alexander Fraser Tytler
Fair point, then those boomer parents should pay the bills that they co-signed for their entitled little brats. That's how contract law works, not some tyrant in the White House trying to buy votes on my back.
I paid for my sons college. IN FULL. I'll be damn'ed if I pay for someone elses' kid too. And yes, I'm a boomer born in 1962.
Not every 'boomer is for free shit. Far more of us rail against it than you know. I know a shit ton of people, all boomers. Not ONE of us wants free stuff. We all paid our own way and expect others to do the same.
Words I've lived by every damn' day of my life.
What makes the writer think that these were “Policy Errors?”
An error is an unintended consequence.
“College, cars, homes, most things were cheap for Baby Boomers.”
The list price on my mother’s 1968 Pontiac Firebird was about $3500.
That would be about $40,000 adjusted for inflation.
In 1979, my college tuition was $4,000/year, or about $28,000 adjusted for inflation. Middle class whites pay more nowadays to help subsidize the “underprivileged”.
I’m a boomer and I had no say in printing money. No one I voted for articulated that that was part of their platform.
It’s going to be a breeze to move the younger generations into 15 minute cities. They’ll just regulate rental units to an unaffordable cost and they’ll gladly walk into the jail of utopia.
My house went from $74,000 in 1982, when I bought it, to $113,000 in 1992, when I sold it.
It did not double in price as your graph might suggest.
Fairfax County became McMansion county and of course the typical house sales price increased.
In part of the 1970s Fairfax County had a construction moratorium I believe which caused its housing prices to shoot up.
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