Spring 2008 Housing Review Now Available - JCHS Harvard

Features include:
* New Report: America’s Rental Housing: The Key to a Balanced National Policy
* New Book: Revisiting Rental Housing: Policies, Programs, and Priorities edited by Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky
* New Research Initiative: Understanding the Recent Boom and Bust of the Subprime Market
* Announcement of the 9th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture featuring Lewis S. Ranieri
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Why not raise reverse mortgage limits? - … “This is very disappointing,’’ said Lee McCutcheon, a reverse mortgage specialist. “There are many seniors who have been waiting for the higher figures to be in place so that they could obtain a reverse mortgage or refinance an existing reverse mortgage. The increased limits would really help, and hopefully they will be adopted soon.” .. - Akron.com 

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Paper: The Federal Response to Home Mortgage Distress: Lessons from the Great Depression - David C. Wheelock  - FRB St. Louis 
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Which Will It Be? -   Steve Forbes says Hank Paulson shrinks from bold engagement. - Is Treasury Chief Hank Paulson the financial equivalent of Civil War General George B. McClellan? - Forbes
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1.  RPX Index - Many U.S. homes now cheaper per square foot - Index: Sacramento leads downward trend, Charlotte defies it - Inman News 

2. Foreclosures, REO Pressuring Home Prices in Many Key Markets: Report -  Paul Jackson - But RadarLogic’s monthly housing report delves into some interesting analysis that finds an REO effect of an entirely different sort: bank-owned homes now tend to be discounted so heavily relative to the rest of the housing inventory, that in markets where REO has become prevalent enough, a pretty large divergence now exists between bank-owned sales prices and everything else. - housingwire

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Lies and Other Statistics - John Mauldin’s Weekly E-Letter 

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Winning the Board Game - Brian Hindo - … The latest egregious spectacle: At Washington Mutual (WM), chairman and CEO Kerry Killinger tried unsuccessfully to exclude mortgage-related losses from 2008 bonus calculations. … - BusinessWeek 

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The Road to a Jumbo Mortgage Was Supposed to Get Easier - MATT RICHTEL - NYTimes

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The Wall Street Journal had a very disturbing story on Wednesday about the “Fast and Easy” loan program of Countrywide Financial Corporation, many of whose mortgages were bought up by Fannie Mae. … But here’s the part that really scared me … - James Hamilton - Econbrowser

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Fed Delivers Steep Yield Curve: A Bull’s Best Friend - tradersnarrative

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Pawnshop Society - A telling sign of overconsumption can be seen in the now booming pawnshop business. - Michael Shedlock - globaleconomicanalysis

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Bernanke-Geithner `Rogue Operation’ Spurs Further Bailout Calls - Bloomberg 

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Chart of the Day - Today, crude oil closed at over $112 per barrel. As would be expected, this has translated into high prices at the pump. How high? As today’s chart illustrates, the cost of one gallon of gasoline has just surpassed the inflation-adjusted peak of 1981. - Chart of the Day

posted by Bill Copedge