NEW YORK (Reuters) – The percentage of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will nearly double to 48 percent in 2011 from 26 percent at the end of March, portending another blow to the housing market, Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday.
[…]Covering 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, Deutsche Bank in June forecast home prices would fall 14 percent through the first quarter of 2011, for a total drop of 41.7 percent.
[…]Homeowners with the riskiest mortgages taken out during the housing boom have seen the greatest erosion in equity, in part because they were “affordability products” originated at the housing peak, Deutsche said. They include subprime loans, of which 69 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 50 percent in March, Deutsche said,
Of option adjustable-rate mortgages — which cut payments by allowing principal balances to rise — 89 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 77 percent, the report said.
Regions suffering the worst negative equity are areas in California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and West Virginia. Las Vegas and parts of Florida and California will see 90 percent or more of their loans underwater by 2011, it added.
Socialism destroys economic growth. There is no way around it.
When Democrats talk about economic policies, they don’t actually know what they are talking about. They just make up numbers and conducting kabuki-theater townhalls with pre-screened questions from hard-core Democrat activists. They’ll say whatever is necessary in order to maintain power.
Want proof?
Here’s proof from the Heritage Foundation. Democrats promised us that if their pork-filled spending bills were passed, that unemployment would be much lower than if we did nothing at all. But guess what? They passed the spending bills and unemployment is MUCH HIGHER now than if we had done nothing at all.
Obama's massive spending bills caused us to have a much higher unemployment rate than if we had not spent one thin dime
That means that we are now stuck with trillions of dollars in spending, massive budget deficits and a ballooning national debt. And not only did it not help unemployment, it actually HURT the unemployment rate.
Heritage writes:
In January, President Obama pressed for an $800 billion economic “stimulus” package to turn the economy around. Though the bill largely consisted of increased spending on traditional liberal priorities, the President claimed that it would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs. The President’s economic advisors predicted that unemployment would rise to 9 percent by 2010 if Congress did not pass the stimulus bill, but that with the stimulus unemployment would stay below 8 percentage points.
Congress passed the stimulus bill in February 2009 and the President has repeated his claims. President Obama recently said that the stimulus bill has already created or saved 150,000 new jobs and that it will “create or save” another 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer. Asked when the public should begin to judge the effects of the stimulus, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said “I think we should begin to judge it now.”
Surprise! You can’t borrow and spend your way out of debt. Maybe having rich parents is not the best preparation for higher office, yes?
Bush “spent” money on trillions of dollars in tax cuts. That’s how you stimulate an economy. Put the money back in the private sector – in the hands of working families and businesses – not in the hands of bureaucrats.
How out-of-touch are the Democrats?
The Wall Street Journal reports on how sincere the Democrats are in their empathy for the common man. (H/T Hot Air)
Excerpt:
The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That’s a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.
The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as “codels,” has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.
Although complete travel records aren’t yet available for 2009, it appears that such costs continue to rise. The Journal analysis shows that the government has picked up the tab for travel to destinations such as Jamaica, the Virgin Islands and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
People are suffering under a recession caused by the Democrats and they just keep collecting and spending more and more of our money!
We knew that Democrats would do this: we had access to their voting records, their pork and earmark records, their records on spending, waste and other issues. People who studied their voting records and voter guides knew that Democrats would mess up the economy.
The Republican response
Read this statement by Eric Cantor and you will hear a completely different attitude from the Democrats.
Excerpt:
“First and foremost, the American people are concerned about the economy, job creation and the unsustainable debt obligations incurred in the last 6 months.
Beginning in January, House Republicans laid out a serious and substantive agenda that put jobs first. House Democrats, along with the White House, instead took an unfocused, ‘go it alone’ approach that has fallen well short of its goals and has failed to create jobs.
“Inexplicably, instead of focusing on jobs and restoring the financial security that has been lost by millions of struggling families, the President continues to push an agenda that the majority of Americans are uneasy with. The American people do not support a government healthcare plan that will increase costs, reduce patient choice and flexibility, and lower the quality of care available in our country. The American people do not support the radical Cap & Tax plan which will impose a hard-hitting tax upon families and small businesses costing our struggling economy thousands of jobs.
“As job losses continue to mount, families’ worries about losing their healthcare, paying their mortgage, and sending their children to college continues to intensify. Employment must be our focus, yet Speaker Pelosi and the unchecked Democrat majorities continue to increase Washington’s hand in the free market, at the expense of job creation. At some point, even the Speaker must realize that enough is enough.
Mike Pence gives his assessment of the situation here.
…the Iraqi government has to decide on how to lure foreign investors and oil firms to setup shop in the many rich oil fields. With modern development, industry and organization Iraq could be a major producer and, potentially, one of the major countries in the world in just a few decades. So far, things haven’t exactly happened in the order many experts and investors hoped.The hang up is, of course, price per barrel. Companies were asking too much for operating in the country in the eyes of the government. Still, others were willing to operate at loss just to get a foothold in the new market.
It’s funny, because if our war in Iraq were really a war for oil, why is Iraq taking offers to see who will be drilling for all that oil? (The offers are also coming from China, Russia and India, not just the USA)
Since early 2007 the Egyptian government has been appeasing Muslim fundamentalists by settling matters of sectarian conflict out of court in line with Islamic Sharia law. That prohibits Christians from bringing evidence against Muslims. The government brokers ‘reconciliation’ sessions where the Christians are forced to drop all the charges they are making (arson, looting, assault, kidnap, robbery, criminal damage, rioting, torture, rape, murder) in exchange for Muslim guarantees of ‘peace’.
…Not only is violence against Christian individuals, churches and communities escalating dangerously, but the courts are increasingly subordinating the Constitution to Sharia law. Notably, the courts are refusing to allow Muslims the right to convert. The consequences of this are huge. A woman who is officially registered as a Muslim must by law marry a Muslim and the children of a man officially registered as a Muslim are automatically deemed Muslim by the State. The few who have courageously challenged this have been forced into hiding to preserve their lives.
Please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries.
Sri Lanka, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.
Wow! Michael Totten has a super-long interview with Robert Kaplan, a moderate who writes about the U.S. military and global conflicts in the most far-flung places in the world.
Excerpts:
Kaplan: …The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say “you have to kill all the people to get to us.” So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.
Kaplan: …The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s “peace and love” Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.
Wow, this thing was really messy. You have suicide bombing terrorists with human shields on the one side, and a journalist-killing authoritarian government on the other side. There were no good guys. What a mess. These militant Buddhists remind me of the militant nationalist Hindus I talked about before.
Here is a pretty useful timeline of events from Atlas Shrugs for the current democratic crisis in Honduras. This article really emphasizes the socialist policies of the wanna-be dictator. The person who provided it is an American investor living in Honduras.
Excerpt:
I have been disgusted at the world reaction to these events. It’s like they only looked at what happened on Sunday morning and ignored what events led to that day. I don’t understand how the removal of Zelaya was anything less than a small country demanding that their country remain democratic. Their constitutional process worked exactly right to remove a rogue president with an agenda that was detrimental to the Honduran constitution and society. While the actions o f June 28 would fit some definitions of a coup, it was certainly a legal and CONSTITUTIONAL coup. There have been several articles written that state that it was a MANDATORY coup. That’s a very difficult concept for most people from the first world to understand, but there are some coups that are good and even required.
I hope that Honduras can bear up under the economic sanctions they are likely to face – and no help from Obama, either. He seems to prefer Chavez and Ahmadinejad.
WINTERY KNIGHT 