Dim view of housing market weighs on economy

Builders have dim view of new-home sales; unlikely to hire until housing market improves

Finance.Yahoo.Com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Optimism is in short supply among U.S. homebuilders, a sign that the depressed housing market will slow the economy's gains this year.
The outlook by builders hasn't improved since the fall, when new-home sales were in the midst of their bleakest year in a half-century.

Less home building means fewer jobs for the economy. Construction work now accounts for about 5 percent of the nation's private employment. But nearly 2 million of the roughly 14 million unemployed Americans previously worked in construction.

Analysts say the economy needs to accelerate job creation before the housing industry can fully recover. Without more jobs and higher wages, home sales will stagnate.

"We probably won't see a strong recovery in construction jobs anytime soon," said Sal Guatieri, senior economist BMO Capital Markets. "Not a lot of people are showing up to builders' lots, not even to kick the tires. We just have to wait it out."

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Madoff To NY Newspaper: Banks 'Complicit' In Fraud

Bernard Madoff Says He Gave Documents To Help Get Money Back

NEW YORK -- Disgraced Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff said in an interview published online Tuesday that banks and hedge funds were "complicit" in his scheme to fleece victims out of billions of dollars.

Madoff did not name any institutions in his series of interviews with The New York Times but said banks and hedge funds "were complicit in one form or another." He said they failed to scrutinize the discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information.

"They had to know," he said in his first interviews for publication since his 2008 arrest. "But the attitude was sort of, 'If you're doing something wrong, we don't want to know.'"

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Don't Forget this:

Obama’s Budget Banter Omission: The Banks Broke the Bank

Nomi Prins
Zero Hedge
February 15, 2011

Since the White House announced its 2012 budget, the requisite punditry stream has been breaking down its specific pluses and minuses. I could grab illustrative quotes from various places and people, or add to the analytical details, but for the most part, it boils down to something like this:

GOP and GOP supporters: Obama didn’t make enough spending cuts, he’s not taking this whole budget thing seriously. Oh, and about the cuts he did suggest with regard to corporate tax benefits, high-end mortgage-holder deductions and (his-own) extension of wealthy individual Bushian tax breaks – well, that’s just plain anti-American and – will kill jobs. (The fact that corporations were contributing just 6.6% and 7.2% in 2009 and 2010, of the total federal tax receipts, a 50% drop relative to the rate before the financial crisis, or about $150 billion per year, isn’t relevant in the scheme of things.) Now, where can we cut another $100 billion?


DEMs and DEM supporters: Obama inherited a bum economy, bum budget and bum deficit from Bush. And, he’s turning around the crap hand he was dealt, slowly.  That means he has to cut back on some important programs, but he’s gonna champion a high-speed railway, electric cars (to drive along side the high-speed railway?), and clean energy initiatives, and those will most certainly put millions of people back to work. Yes, he appointed Tim Geithner, one of the lead bank bailout builders, whose Treasury department colluded with the Fed, under Ben Bernanke, the other guy Obama kept on deck to help the economy, to increase the amount of US Treasury debt to $9.4 trillion from $5.4 trillion since the financial system began inhaling subsidies in the fall of 2008, and went on to post record bonuses and profits. But, he had no choice.

Dr. James Galbraith, Professional Fed Killer

Dr. James Galbraith, Professional Fed Killer

Editor's Note - A brilliant blast from the past that we guarantee none of you saw the first time around.  Except that is for Dr. Galbraith himself, who posted this Daily Bail story on the website for the Univ. of Texas LBJ School, where he serves as Chairman.

Video - Dr. Galbraith and Dr. Paul Discuss the Constitutionality of the Federal Reserve - July 26, 2009

Extraordinary discussion from today's hearings.  Skip immediately to the 3 minute mark.  We've always known Galbraith to be a calm, calculated truth-teller, and he doesn't disappoint here, even looking slightly possessed in this clip.  His answer doesn't come until at least the 4:15 mark.  He practically tells Paul that it's in their interest and within the original charter, for Congress to change the funding agreement for the Fed.   Watch his expressionless body as he emasculates the Fed with serene precision and then utters the most beautiful phrase of all:

• "And it seems to me that it would be the appropriate decision for Congress to make."

And then he repeats himself because that's what professional Fed killers do.
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More from Galbraith at the same hearing....




Video:  Opening statement from Dr. Galbraith -- July 9, 2009

Outstanding remarks...couldn't agree more.