REQUIRED READING: Where is the Bottom in Housing? - John Mauldin’s Weekly E-Letter

link to John Burns’s Power Point Presentation 
link to 72 page T2 Presentation 

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America’s Coming Garage Sale - TIME.com
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Paulson Talks Tough - But Treasury secretary’s proposals lack the teeth to police Wall Street. - Liz Moyer -  Forbes

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Citigroup Freezes HELOCs - Here is an interesting article on QueerCents about Citibank Freezing Home Equity Lines of Credit. - globaleconomicanalysis

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Housing Affordabilty Index Reaches 4-Year High - Mark Perry - Carpe Diem 

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Recession, Recoupling and Reflation - Joachim Fels - Morgan Stanley 

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Long Island: a third of state subprime foreclosures -  NewsDay 

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Special report from Comstock Partners

How We Got Into This Mess!”
Median New Home Prices vs Median Household Disposable Income (pdf) 
Home Price Appreciation vs CPI - Rent (pdf) 
Total Credit Market Debt Outstanding/GDP Ratio (pdf) 
This Special Report will deal with the possibility that the market move of the past five years was not the bull market that everyone else believes, but instead a very strong counter-trend move in a secular bear market.
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Losses Resulting From Mortgage Fraud in US Will Reach $2.5 Billion in 2008 - riskcenter.com 

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Northshore Chicagoland - I live here. - Homeowners increasingly face foreclosure - has chart … For example, foreclosures jumped 141 percent in Glenview over that time span, from 34 in 2005 to 82 in 2007. In Wilmette they jumped 136 percent, from 14 in 2005 to 33 last year. -  Evanston Review 

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Declining Home Values - What Effect Will It Have On Reverse Mortgages? - HULIQ

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Freddie Mac total mortgage portfolio rises at annualized rate of 12% in February - CNN Money

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Getting better?  - many charts  - Various Crisis Indicators - Bespoke Investment Group
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has map over time showing changes at state level - Recessions at the state level - James Hamilton - EconBrowser

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Our Not-So-Elastic Currency - Fed Balance Sheet - how it has changed from August 2007 vs. now - … What you are seeing is a substitution of T-bills and T-notes for short-term lending against collateral with greater credit risk (though with haircuts). If you net all of the changes that I highlighted on the asset side, it adds up to the change in assets less $3.5 billion. …  has details - David Merkel - Aleph Blog
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David Sambol’s good day - Countrywide exec gets $28 million from Bank of America - … The amount, which vests over three years, is 37 percent higher than the $20.4 million that Bank of America Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis was compensated in 2007 to run the second-largest U.S. bank. … -   Reuters

posted by Bill Coppedge