Does anyone find it weird that the housing crash was the biggest business story in 2006 (per the AP), and has completely overtaken the MSM and the dinner table for the past six months or so - nearly every day in the USA Today, Financial Times, Arizona Republic, New York Times, etc.... And yet Time magazine has done almost zero housing crash or subprime disaster reporting. And when they do it's a fluff piece or terrible reporting. And not a single cover since their now-hilarious going goo-goo for housing piece.
So what's up? Are they embarrassed? Are they corrupt? Or are they just Bush-like-incompetent? Does Time Warner take so much REIC advertising $$ that they don't want to admit the truth? Does Richard Parsons, Time Warner CEO, have some kind of strange REIC connection?
Something just doesn't make sense. Every issue for the past year should have had an article about the housing bubble / housing crash / REIC meltdown / subprime disaster. And at least four or five covers by now.
So what the hell is going on?
When Time FINALLY puts the housing crash on the cover, any predictions on what it'll say?
26 comments:
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Keith,
I predict the cover will simply say
SORRY
it'll say
Sorry
I don't think it's just Time magazine. Our local news here in Oklahoma FINALLY did a fluff piece about the housing bubble last night. I have been attempting to educate myself about it ever since I stumbled onto the USA Today article featuring Casey last fall and my family and friends thought for a long time that I was nothing more than a doomsayer.
I have to admit I felt a bit vindicated when my aunt was fighting all the flippers off left and right when she was selling my grandfather's home. She didn't believe me until her realtor told her that the flood of flippers into Oklahoma has been absolutely unreal since last summer and thats when she finally took my advice and googled housing bubble. She doesn't think I am a doomsayer anymore. Wish I got more pleasure out of it than I do.
I have to admit I am really worried about buying a home right now even though we are doing it smart by bying below our price range and have our VA loan to back us. We are just so sick of renting and you would think we are abusive parents the way our family act over the fact that our kids don't have a home of their own. LOL Like it will be in any way thiers anyway!
Britain's American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. The two most traumatic experiences in the nation's history were the Civil War (1861-65) and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world's most powerful nation state. The economy is marked by steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology.
"I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply." Another son, Nathan Mayer Rothschild bragged.
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. --President James A. Garfield
maybe they were simply clueless. they finally realized it, which is not a good thing for a news agent when it not a news anymore to anyone.
Just as Time's first cover was at the peak of the bubble, so the follow up cover will be at rock bottom, maybe years down the road.
Has Time ever used the same subject twice on its front page, i.e., Adolph Hitler, etc.?
At least they did not use Casey as an example.
You are talking about the guys who gleefully bought AOL at the peak of the dotCom bubble. Ironically, their sense of 'timing' is way, way, off.
Time mag is one leftist rag - funny you don't LOVE it. Glad to see to dying with the rest of the left wing dinosaur media...
Marky Mark
James A Garfield was the 20th President of the United States (1881) and the second U.S. President to be assassinated (Abraham Lincoln was the first).
I suppose it is futile to mention it at this point, but that Time cover was hardly a bullish call on real estate. Read the headlines. "Is it time to buy -- or sell?" (with emphasis subtly directed to the second option). "The case for renting" -- that is close to an outright negative call on real estate values. The picture on the cover of a guy grinning stupidly and hugging a house, paired with the headline "Why we're going ga ga for real estate," makes it pretty clear that the Time editors believe people have taken leave of their senses.
That Time cover has become a convenient symbol for how the mainstream media failed to report the housing bubble story as it was happening. But in fact, there are many far better examples of how the mainstream media failed in this regard.
At this point, however, the myth has been so effectively cemented in the minds of so many, that nobody stands a chance of setting the record straight.
Look out below....
LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Wall Street is looking at a higher open on better-than-expected housing and inflation data, with strong quarterly results from Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson underpinning gains.
Spread bettors IG Index expect the Dow Jones Industrial Average to open around 26 points higher at 12,745. 'The market took some comfort in the CPI numbers and on earnings it's been so far, so good,' said John Hughes, managing director at Epiphany Equity Research.
Hughes said the inflation report combined with better-than-expected housing data and a good start to the earnings season have eased some of the fears that have been dogging the market in the first quarter. Investors have been worried that corporate profits have been hurt by a slowing economy brought about in part by a flagging housing market while inflationary pressures remain preventing the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates.
Keep talking about crashes and great depressions morons.
Uh, for what it's worth, AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around.
Here in Long Beach, CA...I don't see a downturn. People are still financing overpriced box homes. I still see 100% finance. I wish people would stop feeding into the overpriced homes and wait it out. But this is California.
Ex: Average home now is $600,000. Compared to 2005..$545,000.
Why should the gov. bail out these people?
Time Warner bought in to the dot-com bubble right as it popped. AOLers made a killing, if they were smart enough to liquidate post-merger.
You're kidding, right?
How exactly does being the bearer of bad news that will directly effect the reader's pocketbook aid in the sales of ANY MSM magazine? You DO realize that almost 70% of Americans are mortgage-debtors, right?
This is not like reading an article on politics where you really don't have a "horse in the race", so to speak: people DON'T want to read about how their house will be decreasing in value over the next decade, and how they'll be getting upside down in their mortgage (especially if they did stupid stuff, like re-fi'ing to buy a boat, etc).
Time had to tap-dance around the risks of going ga-ga for housing (i.e. speculating/flipping), as even that might generate substantial back-lash for them. Telling them the housing market is going into free-fall BEFORE they're convinced of it themselves? That's NOT going to happen....
How does Fannie and Freddie's subprime policy change affect the "great housing crash?"
"Uh, for what it's worth, AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around."
That's the point. They willingly agreed to be acquired by a POS dying company. It was a debacle.
It's going to get ugly.
Foreclosure pace nears decade high
The state's increase could soon pull down home prices and even bring a recession, some economists say.
By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer
April 17, 2007
Nearly 900 Californians a week are losing their homes because they can't afford to pay the mortgage — up from about 100 a week a year ago — providing fresh evidence that the housing market's troubles are nowhere near over.
The surge is raising concerns that home prices will soon suffer as a result. The 11,033 foreclosures in the first three months of the year represent an 800% increase over the same period a year earlier.
In addition, 46,760 homeowners were sent default notices in the first quarter, DataQuick Information Systems reported Monday. A default notice is a warning from a lender to catch up on payments immediately or face eviction.
Foreclosures and default warnings are at their highest points in nearly a decade, the La Jolla-based real estate data tracker said.
So far, the effect on home values has been muted. But as the number of move-outs, evictions and forced sales continue to increase, some economists say they will soon start to push prices down.
First to fall will be the low-income communities where marginal loans proliferated, they say. The trend will spread like a virus to more affluent neighborhoods.
The most pessimistic think a housing bust will wound the economy.
"For this rise in foreclosures to be happening in the midst of a strong labor market is truly unique and scary," said analyst Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics.
He predicts foreclosures will top out at four or five times the current level — enough, he says, to either induce a recession or at least bring the economy to the precipice.
Other experts aren't exactly optimistic but believe that the situation is more ambiguous. They say the state's low unemployment rate of 4.8% and generally healthy economy will absorb trouble, up to a point.
"My gut is the correction we are seeing is regional and very spotty," said Patrick Veling, president of Real Data Strategies in Brea.
Generally, the places with the cheapest housing in the state — including the Inland Empire and Central Valley — are faring the worst.
In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the combined volume of foreclosures rose to 2,369 in the first quarter from 255 in the same period last year. The Central Valley, which includes Sacramento County, jumped to 3,039 from 286.
Another problem spot is San Diego County, where the 1,183 foreclosures is the highest since DataQuick began tracking this information in 1988. The county's market peaked earlier than the rest of the state.
Los Angeles County, the largest housing market in the state, is surprisingly strong. The default rate is almost 60% below the first-quarter 1996 peak, DataQuick said.
Most of the loans going into default now were made at the peak of the housing boom in 2005, when some thought the good times would continue forever and lending standards were lax. Nearly 80% of loans made in the state in May 2005 for the purpose of purchasing houses had adjustable rates, a record high.
Many of these mortgages required the borrowers to put little or no money down, and lenders took their word for whatever income they said they made.
For a moment, everything was fine. Then housing prices stopped going up — meaning that many of these borrowers did not have enough equity or income to refinance to a new loan. Others in foreclosure may be able to afford the payments, but have chosen not to make them because their homes are worth less than they paid.
Foreclosures peaked at 15,418 in the third quarter of 1996, at the tail end of the last big slowdown in the state. They bottomed out at 637 in the second quarter of 2005, as the most recent boom was cresting.
The peak for default warnings was in the first quarter of 1996, with 61,541. The 46,760 warnings reported for the first three months of this year is up 148% from the same period last year.
Nigel,
IMO, the politicians are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, at this point.
You DO realize that the speculator-driven inflated prices that you helped create ARE unsustainable, even IF the Feds were to try and bolster the mania? Did the Feds try to bolster the Stock Market run-ups, including the dotcom crash? If you think the Feds are concerned with helping prop up the deflating housing bubble, I'd say you're mistaken.
FWIW, before the infamous Nikkei real estate crash in Japan in the late 1980's, buyers were taking out newly-created "100-year mortgages" that mortgage companies rolled out supposedly rolled out to encourage "affordability". Of course, more than a few bubble peak buyers committed to these loans, just to avoid being "priced out of the market for ever".
Since then, prices in Japan have dropped to levels that's only a 1/3 of pre-peak prices, and those who committed to paying a mortgage for 100-years on a depreciating asset are TRULY FB.
Notice this from your article:
The company is "working on a major effort to develop more consumer-friendly subprime products that will provide stable financing alternatives going forward," Syron is due to tell the House Financial Services Committee. "These offerings will include 30-year and possibly 40-year fixed-rate mortgages and ARMs with reduced margins and longer fixed-rate periods."
Freddie Mac plans to make its new products available by mid-summer, Syron is due to say.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises that hold federal charters to promote affordable home ownership.
40 years isn't 100 years, but notice it's a step towards longer periods of debt-ownership. That's hardly a step in the right direction, IMO.
You DO realize that Freddie Mae/Mac are "government-sponsored" enterprises, and even if the Government had the willingness to get behind these programs in more than a token way, would NOT be able to fund this?
You've got to realize token lip-service when you see it: this IS a token effort, offering political coverage to some so they can say, "but see, I worked on THIS program to deal with the issue...."
No, the problem IS affordability: it's the PRICE. Creating novel loans (which aren't so novel, but stem back 100's of years, including balloon payments, etc. AKA usery) only delays the inevitable.
heh, heh, heh.
enjoy your self imposed 40 year slavery homedebtors!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_bi_ge/risky_mortgages
He said the new products will include 30-year and possibly 40-year fixed-rate mortgages as well as adjustable-rate mortgages with longer fixed-rate periods.
Fannie Mae, in a new program called "HomeStay," is offering new options so that lenders can help subprime borrowers refinance out of high-interest adjustable-rate mortgages or other difficult loans, said President and CEO Daniel Mudd. He said the company plans to stretch the term on subprime loans to 40 years from the current maximum 30 years — which will reduce monthly payments for borrowers by around 5 percent.
When Time "FINALLY puts the housing crash on the cover..." it will be a strong timing signal to BUY REAL ESTATE.
"Keep talking about crashes and great depressions morons. "
Don't post if you are not going to respond to challenges, you cowardly little bitch!
"Los Angeles County, the largest housing market in the state, is surprisingly strong. The default rate is almost 60% below the first-quarter 1996 peak, DataQuick said. "
I find this hard to believe. L.A. County has more low-lifes, dead-beats, crack addicts, illegals, welfare moms, and high school dropouts than anywhere else in the country.
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