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 . '/' . substr('9780316200806',-6,3) . '/' . '9780316200806' . '.jpg'; ?>)
Edited by Hunter Davies
$29.99
By David Hirst
$21
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Image via Shutterstock
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By Robert Reich — Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is that we’re in the fifth year of a supposed economic recovery from the second-worst economic downturn of the past century, and we’re still not nearly back on track. Instead, we’ve had the most anemic recovery in history.
Posted on Apr 7, 2013
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Flickr/ 401(K) 2013
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According to Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell, singles can pay as much as $1 million more over a lifetime than those who are married, simply because of their marital status.
Posted on Jan 15, 2013
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By David Sirota — With Congress finally starting to have a serious conversation about our revenue crisis, there are obvious reasons to limit the amount of mortgage interest that Americans can deduct from their taxable income.
Posted on Dec 13, 2012
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Flickr / quinn.anya (CC-BY-SA)
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As America’s middle class continues to diminish, it follows that the middle-class neighborhoods they once called home would shrink accordingly. Well, they are, finds a new Stanford University study, which charted changes in Americans’ living quarters since 1970. The results are sobering, if unsurprising.
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Flickr / Diana Parkhouse (CC-BY)
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U.S. mortgage rates on 30-year fixed loans have fallen to a record low after the Federal Reserve last week announced its plan to reduce borrowing costs by replacing short-term debt with more long-term debt. (more)
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Flickr / Benjamin Chun (CC-BY-SA)
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Israel decided to move ahead with settlement construction Tuesday, giving the go-ahead for the building of 1,100 housing units in east Jerusalem, even after Palestinians claimed the area as their future capital in their application for U.N. membership last week.
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Collage from a photo by World Economic Forum / Remy Steinegger
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Israel’s Interior Ministry has approved a 1,600-unit housing complex in East Jerusalem. It’s the same complex that was announced last year, embarrassing a visiting Vice President Joe Biden, and it comes with the promise to build an additional 2,700 units of housing in the occupied Palestinian area of the city.
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Economic frustrations, particularly the high cost of rent, have breathed new life into the Israeli left. Residents of a tent city in Tel Aviv, constructed to protest financial woes, put Israel’s conservative prime minister on the defense, forcing him to announce a committee Sunday to look into reforms.
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Flickr/Images_of_Money
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According to at least some sources, certain sectors of the American economy are showing signs of life, but the housing market sure isn’t one of them, especially considering the news expected to surface Tuesday that prices have now dipped below the previous lowest point recorded since this recession kicked in three years ago. The recession’s earlier bottom for housing prices occurred in 2009.
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AP / Louis Lanzano
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By Robert Scheer — Rejoice, the housing market is back. Sandy Weill just picked up a humdinger of a wine vineyard estate in Sonoma, Calif., for a record $31 million, so the foreclosure crisis must be over.
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AP / Sang Tan
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The U.S. economy had a bit of a pickup during this year’s third quarter, showing growth of 2 percent. Meanwhile, the housing market remains limp and high unemployment recalcitrantly hovers at 9.6 percent.
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Flickr / futureatlas.com (CC-BY)
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So, remember that whole bailout thing that began a couple of years ago? It’s not over yet, at least not when it comes to those delinquent housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to new government projections, the Fannie and Freddie bailout fiasco could ... (continued)
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AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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With a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank about to expire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging Israeli settlers to show restraint. President Barack Obama has prodded Israel to extend the moratorium, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of Jewish settlements.
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AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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One step forward ... well, you know the rest. Although a new round of peace talks signaled a much-needed, if tentative, show of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, those negotiations have already hit a big bump over Israel’s construction activities in East Jerusalem.
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AP / Oded Balilty
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Some Israeli settlers are taking Zionism to a whole new level. Some 200 settlers, living illegally on occupied Palestinian land, marched on the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem to assert their supposed right to live on occupied land as well as to affirm “Jewish sovereignty over the whole city.”
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Flickr / James Callan
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We can all now breathe a collective sigh of relief: Bank of America has returned to quarterly profit after losing almost $200 million in the last quarter of 2009. The news comes even as home foreclosure activity hit an all-time record in March.
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AP / Alexander Zemlianichenko
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The negative reactions are snowballing on multiple fronts against Israel’s highly controversial decision to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, an announcement that put the kibosh on Vice President Joe Biden’s good-will visit last week. (continued)
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AP / Rodrigo Abd
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Today marks the one-month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, which provides an appropriate moment to bring attention to the recovery effort—rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, caring for those still injured and helping the hundreds of thousands still in precarious situations.
Posted on Feb 12, 2010
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Still image from the Make It Right project's Web site.
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Does Brad Pitt’s housing development project in New Orleans’ Katrina-ravished Ninth Ward represent a much-needed boost to the neighborhood, no matter from whence it came? Or do his efforts amount to yet another example of a Hollywood do-gooder’s personal crusade ... (continued)
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AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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In a strong rebuke of Israeli policy, the White House has expressed “regret” over an announcement by Israel that it will expand its illegal settlements in Palestinian areas. Hundreds of new housing units are expected to be approved for construction in the West Bank in a move seen as placating the rightists in power.
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bloomberg.com
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The acting chief financial officer for housing lender Freddie Mac, David Kellermann, was found dead Wednesday morning in what appeared to be a suicide. If the death is ruled a suicide, Kellermann will be the seventh high-profile financial services executive to have taken his own life under stress from the current economic crisis.
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willows-journal.com
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While $700 billion was given to the banks and credit institutions that haphazardly pushed forward our current economic fiasco, millions of homeowners at risk of foreclosure may now be given only about one-tenth of that figure—$75 billion—in an effort to slow the deterioration of the housing market.
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By Marie Cocco — Remember this, President Obama: There are few Washington traditions as annoying as the cultish worship of bipartisanship, for it ignores the simple fact that sometimes one party gets things disastrously wrong.
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Flickr / respres
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With half of the $700 billion in TARP funds already spent and not a whole lot to show for it, Barack Obama has pledged to spend the second parcel differently, with at least some of the money going to desperate homeowners. President Bush has agreed to request the funds on Obama’s behalf in order to expedite the process.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Analysts believe the economy is already in “horrific shape”—with news this month of record-breaking drops in the cost of living and new home construction—and is inching closer to a dangerous deflationary period, which could worsen the current economic crisis by making debts even harder to repay.
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engadget.com
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Alaska’s Sen. Ted Stevens (the Internet as a “series of tubes” guy) testified in his own defense at his corruption trial Friday, blaming the fact that he received $250,000 in free house renovations and gifts first on his wife, then family friends, and ultimately on the many responsibilities of a U.S. senator.
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By Eugene Robinson — We all owe a debt of thanks to the skeptics who refused to be steamrollered by the Bush administration’s $700-billion financial bailout plan until we at least had some understanding of what we were doing and why.
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flickr.com/ikkoskinen
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One sign of the nation’s shaky economy can be seen in the growing numbers of newly homeless people forming “tent cities” around the U.S. The rise of these encampments is being attributed partly to the foreclosure crisis in the housing market, and the newest economic developments aren’t likely to ease the situation.
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Investors have been throwing money at stock markets the world over following the news that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been placed under federal conservatorship. Some analysts are confident that the move will stabilize the mortgage giants and, in turn, a tanking housing market. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, let’s hope they’re right.
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Detroit News / Ankur Dholakia
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In the face of a U.S. housing crisis and a troubled economy, Bush administration officials claim that the past two years have seen a 30 percent drop in the levels of chronically homeless people, crediting the decrease to a strategy of finding permanent shelter for the long-ignored disabled and addicted.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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There’s a lot the president doesn’t like about the new housing bill, just passed by the House, but he’ll hold his nose and sign it. The package includes huge guarantees for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae—the national debt ceiling had to be lifted by about $800 billion, just in case—but also rescue for hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure.
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Flickr / wwarby
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expects America’s economic struggles to continue well into next year and has asked Congress to expand his regulatory powers. Lawmakers are unlikely to fulfill his request any time soon. Bernanke also suggested that the Fed could continue to bail out investment banks.
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By David Sirota — Congress is ravaged by a disease inside the Washington Beltway inhibiting emotions like compassion and integrity. As the housing crisis intensifies, this malady is getting worse.
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Officials at the Federal Reserve are running out of creative ways to stave off a recession and expect the U.S. economy to slow to a crawl in 2008, with a growth rate of only 1.3 to 2 percent over the year.
Posted on Feb 20, 2008
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The term “subprime mortgage” has certainly been in heavy rotation in recent months, and economic panic has spread as a result of lenders playing fast and loose with their home-lending criteria, causing chaos in the mortgage market. Enter the Federal Reserve to try to undo some of the damage and prevent a recurrence.
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zdnet.com
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With the dollar getting weaker all the time, the ailing housing market is getting a little relief from an unexpected source: foreigners. Brits in particular have been tempted by bargain homes in glamorous locales such as Manhattan, where one-third of all new condominiums are selling to foreign buyers.
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AP photo / Katsumi Kasahara
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By James Harris — The New York Times columnist brings his liberal conscience and economic expertise to bear on the housing crisis and sheds light on the dirty secret behind many political victories by conservatives: “The consistent source of [Republican] success has been race.”
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AP photo / Katsumi Kasahara
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New York Times columnist Paul Krugman brings his liberal conscience and economic expertise to bear on the housing crisis and sheds light on the dirty secret behind many political victories by conservatives: “The consistent source of [Republican] success has been race.”
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If you’re caught up financially in the housing bubble (who isn’t these days?), you might want to skip this item. Home prices have fallen by 3.2 percent—the sharpest drop in 20 years, while the median price for homes has gone down for the 12th consecutive month—another record. That’s not good news for a market eager to return to the good ol’ days of easy loans and overpriced homes.
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The cooling of the U.S. housing market has begun to pull down the entire economy, just as experts had been predicting for several years now.
This was inevitable after the ludicrously overheated highs of the last few years, and we can only hope it’s going to be a slow leak.
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Nearly every large metropolitan city lost more people than it gained from 2000 to 2004, as people of all demographics sought out the exurbs for cheaper housing.
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Greenland’s Great Melt Is Pinned On Climate Change
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