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In the years since the recession, the dream of a steady paycheck and a home in a nice neighborhood have become more elusive for many working-class Americans. While some may say that the lack of homeownership reflects changing values, owning a home remains an important tool for wealth building for most families. Yet it is particularly unattainable for low-income and minority households. The homeownership rate for households that fall below median income was less than 50 percent in 2014, for those who made above the median it was nearly 80 percent. And the gap in homeownership between whites, and blacks...

Contrary to the prevailing view that only borrowers with pristine credit records can get a mortgage these days, many risky loans are still being made. A new index published by the International Center on Housing Risk at the American Enterprise Institute measures this risk month by month, based on about three-quarters of all home-purchase loans extended across the country. And the index clearly shows that many of today's mortgages would not perform well under stressful conditions. This conclusion holds for the nation as a whole and for nearly every state individually, California included. Here's why. In recent months, fully half...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is beginning an international tour to try to stem the impact of falling oil prices and a deepening recession. Mr Maduro goes first to China - a major source of loans for Venezuela - for talks with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping. He will then travel to various Opec member countries to press for cuts in oil output that would boost prices. Venezuelan oil prices have dropped by half since June. The country gets most of its foreign currency from oil exports and is estimated to have the largest oil reserves in the world. Before he...

To understand the backstory, letÂ’s take a quick look at AIGÂ’s role in the housing bubble. Broadly speaking, AIG sells insurance, and one of its divisions (AIG Financial Products) sold a very specific type of insurance called a credit default swap. If you were a big bank and you owned a mortgage backed security (stuffed into a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO), you could buy a credit default swap against the possibility that the security would default. Then, because you owned this insurance, whatever that security might contain, be it good loans or the most toxic dreck imaginable, it was...

Premier Li Keqiang is determined to drive through deep reforms and wean the economy off exorbitant levels of debt before the damage becomes irreversible ___ China’s leaders have brushed aside warnings of an incipient credit crunch in the Chinese economy, determined to purge excesses from the financial system despite falling house prices and the deepest industrial slowdown since the Lehman crisis. Industrial production dropped 0.4pc in August from a month earlier, a rare event that highlights how quickly China is coming off the boil. The growth of fixed asset investment fell to record lows. “It is a shockingly sharp deceleration,”...

The OECD has drastically cut its growth forecast for Italy. The depression will drag on though most of 2015. The economy will contract by 0.4pc this year. It will remain stuck in the doldrums next year with growth of just 0.1pc. If so, Italy’s public debt will spiral to dangerous levels next year, ever further beyond the point of no return for a country without its own sovereign currency and central bank. “This is catastrophic for the finances of the country. We’re heading for a debt ratio of 145pc next year,” said Antonio Guglielmi, global strategist for Mediobanca. “Who knows...

We went on a bond-buying spree that was supposed to help Main Street. Instead, it was a feast for Wall Street. ___ I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time. Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the...

Obama will propose eliminating mortgage finance entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time, replacing them with a system in which the private market buys home loans from lenders and repackages them as securities for investors, senior administration officials said. The mortgage securitization process is deemed essential to the smooth flow of capital to housing markets and the availability of credit. A government reinsurer of mortgage securities could backstop private capital in a crisis, the official said.

There's dumb and then there's really dumb. The executive of Sacramento County in California recently attributed the increase in his county’s pension costs to “investment losses during the recession.” The official, Brad Hudson, is right that public pension costs are growing, but not that investment losses are to blame. To the contrary, these expenses are rising despite gains in pension-fund investments. Oh really? The article goes on to say that the Dow is up 15% from December 31st 2007 to June 3rd of this year. True. But annualized this is less than a 3% rate of return, while the pension...

As Barron's notes in this recent interview, Marc Faber view the world with a skeptical eye, and never hesitates to speak his mind when things don't look quite right. Faber explains, among other things, the fallacy of the Fed's help "the problem is the money doesn't flow into the system evenly, how with money-printing "the majority loses, and the minority wins," and how, thanks to the further misallocation of capital, "people with assets are all doomed, because prices are grossly inflated globally for stocks and bonds." Excerpted from Barron's: On the error of the Fed's ways: The Fed has been...

What is going to happen when the greatest economic bubble in the history of the world pops? The mainstream media never talks about that. They are much too busy covering the latest dogfights in Washington and what Justin Bieber has been up to. And most Americans seem to think that if the Dow keeps setting new all-time highs that everything must be okay. Sadly, that is not the case at all. Right now, the U.S. economy is exhibiting all of the classic symptoms of a bubble economy. You can see this when you step back and take a longer-term view...

Podcast/audo 52:57 Will “the cliff” do the trick? Or must we wait for the wave of municipal bankruptcies to kick in first? Why has government spending accelerated if we are truly in a “recovery”? Why is the Fed massively padding its balance sheet? How much of the economy is sapped by unproductive activities? With government responsible for almost half of GDP, how much longer will it be before private business just gives up altogether and America wakes up to a Communist society? It is moving inexorably in that direction. Some statistics proving the presence of deflation.

World economic growth has weakened substantially this year and faces the confluence of a triple threat — the so-called fiscal cliff in the United States, the European debt crisis and a sharp slowdown in China, the United Nations said in a report released on Tuesday. The worst case, the report said, could be a new global recession that mires many countries in a cycle of austerity and unemployment for years. “A worsening of the euro area crisis, the ‘fiscal cliff’ in the United States and a hard landing in China could cause a new global recession,” Mr. Vos said in...

A new and extensive analysis of 2.4 million loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration in recent years shows a pattern of risky lending that could generate $20 billion in losses and harm thousands of the nation’s most vulnerable borrowers. By ignoring risks in loans it insured in 2009 and 2010, the study concludes, the F.H.A. is imperiling both borrowers and taxpayers who stand behind the agency. The analysis emerged less than a month after the F.H.A.’s auditor submitted a troubling report on the financial soundness of its insurance fund. In mid-November, the auditor estimated that the fund, which backs...

A “foreclosure tax” that would take effect in 2013 could mean a high tax bill for those facing foreclosure and millions of families who modified their mortgage or had a short sale through their lender. National Association of Realtors in a blog on its website —- In Washington, much of the political conversation these days surrounds a “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and drastic budget cuts that could ignite another economic recession if lawmakers don’t reach a compromise on such issues before this year ends. One organization, though, recently raised its concerns about another piece of federal legislation and its...

The U.S. economy grew 2.7% in the third quarter, up from a previously reported 2% the government reported Thursday. But the guts of the report raised some concern, notably a big increase in inventories and a big downward revision to consumer spending. For most economists, the GDP report provides further evidence of a U.S. economy that's growing modestly, but far from robustly. For Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, the report is a distraction from the real story: the U.S. economy is already in recession. "The evidence is starting to mount a recession is already underway, and...

Across New York, state and local governments are borrowing $750 million this year to finance their contributions to the state pension system, and are likely to borrow at least $1 billion more over the next year. The number of municipalities and public institutions using this new borrowing mechanism to pay off their annual pension bills has tripled in a year. The eagerness to borrow demonstrates that many major municipalities are struggling to meet their pension obligations, which have risen partly because of generous retirement packages for public employees, and partly because turbulence in the stock market has slowed the pension...

Across New York, state and local governments are borrowing $750 million this year to finance their contributions to the state pension system, and are likely to borrow at least $1 billion more over the next year. The number of municipalities and public institutions using this new borrowing mechanism to pay off their annual pension bills has tripled in a year. The eagerness to borrow demonstrates that many major municipalities are struggling to meet their pension obligations, which have risen partly because of generous retirement packages for public employees, and partly because turbulence in the stock market has slowed the pension...

Little noticed is that on Tuesday Team Obama took its first formal steps toward putting taxpayers behind Wall Street derivatives trading—not behind banks that might make mistakes in derivatives markets, but behind the trading itself. Yes, the same crew that rails against the dangers of derivatives is quietly positioning these financial instruments directly above the taxpayer safety net. Specifically, the law authorizes the Federal Reserve to provide "discount and borrowing privileges" to clearinghouses in emergencies. Traditionally the ability to borrow from the Fed's discount window was reserved for banks, but the new law made clear that a clearinghouse receiving assistance...

The American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison on how government, not greed, was the essential ingredient in the 2008 meltdown. In January 2011, a bipartisan, 10-member, government-created body called the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) issued a comprehensive report assigning blame for the 2008 financial meltdown. The main culprits: “widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision,” “dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions,” “a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency,” a government that “was ill prepared for the crisis,” and “a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.” The four Republicans...