Happy days are here again, the Fed is giving out loans again, to the banks and investment firms that were supposed to be the financial bedrock of the economy again, happy days are here… whoah, Mama.
Wall Street spent the last week getting its little fix of another layer of credit, new borrowing heaped on top of old borrowing. Like anyone under the effects of a stimulant, Wall Street thought that it had enough energy to beat any kind of bad news.
Then, as happens with stimulants, the euphoria disappeared. It happened today, with the news that the value of homes in America declined by 10.7 percent in January. That’s 10.7 percent of ordinary Americans’ wealth, gone.
Never before has such a rapid decline in home value been recorded. Never.
Also, measurements of “consumer confidence”, which are designed to reflect the impressions of Americans outside the financial industry about the economy, hit a five year low this month. Those of us who work away from Wall Street, you see, haven’t been dancing around with stimulants injected into our bank accounts, and so we’ve been evaluating economic reality with a rather grim realism.
It’s a warning to Wall Street from people who are really in the know: It’s not looking good.
Slow down yourself. The 10.7% drop you noted was over a one-year period (Jan 2007 to Jan 2008), not a one month period.
Actually, the whoah, Mama was intended to be a remark of surprise, not a warning to slow down. But yes, you’re right. I got it wrong. Corrected. Thanks.
Since our government just allowed the enormous DEBT that these Wall Street “geniuses” created to be transferred to the public so that THEY remain in business (can you say “rewarding screwups” kids?) via an infusion of BILLIONS of dollars (of our money), further weakening the value of the dollar as a viable currency, is simply OUTRAGEOUS. But since no one will stand up for the American non-corporate citizen, we’re screwed, blued and tatooed for good, folks. Just add this to the list of unsustainable practices of corporate capitalism in a democracy. (The others include the environmental degradation, “ownership” of the government via K-street, cronies running the watchdog agencies, and so on).