Unconventional Economic Wisdom
Fixing America’s Broken Housing Market
Joseph E. Stiglitz
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NEW YORK – A sure sign of a dysfunctional market economy is the persistence of unemployment. In the United States today, one out of six workers who would like a full-time job can’t find one. It is an economy with huge unmet needs and yet vast idle resources.
The housing market is another US anomaly: there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people (more than 1.5 million Americans spent at least one night in a shelter in 2009), while hundreds of thousands of houses sit vacant.
Indeed, the foreclosure rate is increasing. Two million Americans lost their homes in 2008, and 2.8 million more in 2009, but the numbers are expected to be even higher in 2010. Our financial markets performed dismally – well-performing, “rational” markets do not lend to people who cannot or will not repay – and yet those running these markets were rewarded as if they were financial geniuses.
None of this is news. What is news is the Obama administration’s reluctant and belated recognition that its efforts to get the housing and mortgage markets working again have largely failed. Curiously, there is a growing consensus on both the left and the right that the government will have to continue propping up the housing market for the foreseeable future. This stance is perplexing and possibly dangerous.
It is perplexing because in conventional analyses of which activities should be in the public domain, running the national mortgage market is never mentioned. Mastering the specific information related to assessing creditworthiness and monitoring the performance of loans is precisely the kind of thing at which the private sector is supposed to excel.
It is, however, an understandable position: both US political parties supported policies that encouraged excessive investment in housing and excessive leverage, while free-market ideology dissuaded regulators from intervening to stop reckless lending. If the government were to walk away now, real-estate prices would fall even further, banks would come under even greater financial stress, and the economy’s short-run prospects would become bleaker.
But that is precisely why a government-managed mortgage market is dangerous. Distorted interest rates, official guarantees, and tax subsidies encourage continued investment in real estate, when what the economy needs is investment in, say, technology and clean energy.
Moreover, continuing investment in real estate makes it all the more difficult to wean the economy off its real-estate addiction, and the real-estate market off its addiction to government support. Supporting further real-estate investment would make the sector’s value even more dependent on government policies, ensuring that future policymakers face greater political pressure from interests groups like real-estate developers and bonds holders.
Current US policy is befuddled, to say the least. The Federal Reserve Board is no longer the lender of last resort, but the lender of first resort. Credit risk in the mortgage market is being assumed by the government, and market risk by the Fed. No one should be surprised at what has now happened: the private market has essentially disappeared.
The government has announced that these measures, which work (if they do work) by lowering interest rates, are temporary. But that means that when intervention comes to an end, interest rates will rise – and any holder of mortgage-backed bonds would experience a capital loss – potentially a large one.
No private party would buy such an asset. By contrast, the Fed doesn’t have to recognize the loss; while free-market advocates might talk about the virtues of market pricing and “price discovery,” the Fed can pretend that nothing has happened.
With the government assuming credit risk, mortgages become as safe as government bonds of comparable maturity. Hence, the Fed’s intervention in the housing market is really an intervention in the government bond market; the purported “switch” from buying mortgages to buying government bonds is of little significance. The Fed is engaged in the difficult task of trying to set not just the short-term interest rate, but longer-term rates as well.
Resuscitating the housing market is all the more difficult for two reasons. First, the banks that used to do conventional mortgage lending are in bad financial shape. Second, the securitization model is badly broken and not likely to be replaced anytime soon. Unfortunately, neither the Obama administration nor the Fed seems willing to face these realities.
Securitization – putting large numbers of mortgages together to be sold to pension funds and investors around the world – worked only because there were rating agencies that were trusted to ensure that mortgage loans were given to people who would repay them. Today, no one will or should trust the rating agencies, or the investment banks that purveyed flawed products (sometimes designing them to lose money).
In short, government policies to support the housing market not only have failed to fix the problem, but are prolonging the deleveraging process and creating the conditions for Japanese-style malaise. Avoiding this dismal “new normal” will be difficult, but there are alternative policies with far better prospects of returning the US and the global economy to prosperity.
Corporations have learned how to take bad news in stride, write down losses, and move on, but our governments have not. For one out of four US mortgages, the debt exceeds the home’s value. Evictions merely create more homeless people and more vacant homes. What is needed is a quick write-down of the value of the mortgages. Banks will have to recognize the losses and, if necessary, find the additional capital to meet reserve requirements.
This, of course, will be painful for banks, but their pain will be nothing in comparison to the suffering they have inflicted on people throughout the rest of the global economy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in Economics. His latest book, Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy, is now available in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
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HowardA 04:14 11 Sep 10
Go Joe Go!
ckwrites 07:17 11 Sep 10
I fear for the unavoidable decline of the American economy and its global influence. Not only is its housing market broken, more importantly, its moral sense and courage to do what is right – however painful – no longer exist. Sad for the sole superpower in the world.
manuelcc 09:44 11 Sep 10
I have read carefully the article by Stiglitz, which I read years ago, and I found very successful.
The speculative bubble in housing is common in other countries like Spain, where I live, Ireland, United Kingdom, France and other European Union countries and also from other continents.
I am an economist and consultant in real estate is my view that to know whether the home has a higher or lower price, we use the criterion of economic effort to do as a person to buy in years of full salary.
Before the bubble in the U.S., for example, a person spent about 3.8 years of his salary for the purchase of housing. Higher during the bubble was about 7 years of full salary. Now suppose that comes down the downward adjustment in prices.
In the case of Spain rose from 3.8 or 3.9 until the year 2000 to nearly eight years in 2007 when higher housing prices. In the United Kingdom was similar but reached some six years' salary to devote to buying a home.
Historically, the years that a person should devote to the purchase of a home was 3.8 to 4 years. I think if that is the case for decades, it is normal for the next years, housing prices drop to reach these levels of economic sacrifice by a home buyer.
The Economist indicates that the price in Spain is 50% above normal, but according to a criterion of return on rental housing.
In Izadi AG also reached the same conclusion, but using our economic effort that a person must spend to purchase a property measured in terms of years of his salary.
Manuel Caraballo Callero
Izadi AG Economist
http://manuelcaraballo.wordpress.com
tvselvakumaran 01:21 18 Sep 10
A New Perspective on the Global Economic Crisis VI: Why Indeed Isn't America Working?
I. Introduction
During the last six months, I had been abstaining from publishing on the current economics conditions. However, the appearance of some important articles from professional economists recently has made it necessary for me to comment now. Firstly, the outgoing Chairman of the Council of Economics Advisors, Professor Christina Romer has given a thoughtful farewell speech on her efforts during the past 20 months to contain the economic crisis. This speech is important both for the reason that Professor Romer brings her cutting-edge skills as a professional economist to analyze the problems afflicting the American economy, as well as, that it provides an insider-view of the policy decisions made by President Obama's economics team.
Although Professor Romer's speech provides an excellent analysis on the problems afflicting the American economy, there is one major issue that the Obama economics team seems to have missed completely. And that is, gross underestimation of budgetary shortfalls. This oversight seems to be one of the main reasons why the liberal political agenda that President Obama had envisioned upon taking office has gone so awry. As I have explained in my earlier articles, full-fledged Keynesian policies were only suited for colonial times. Even so, the decline in the voting public's approval of these policies, in the last 20 months, was so rapid that it is really confounding. We analyze Professor Romer's farewell speech in Section II to postulate that the main reason for such a rapid decline in voter approval was the inability of mathematical models to incorporate full-fledged Keynesian policies within a short period of four years (2006-10).
Secondly, Professor Kenneth Rogoff has made some important comments in his latest article, "Why America Isn't Working" on Project Syndicate. He makes a strong case that there isn't a lot more that fiscal spending policies could do to deal with the economic crisis, in view of mounting national debt. However, he goes on to say that the Fed could do substantially more. He proposes that the Fed's target for medium-term inflation be raised. Professor Rogoff had made this same proposal originally in December 2008 (He had proposed keeping the Fed's inflation target at 6% for two years in December 2008, but recently he has commented in the media that he would like that the medium-term inflation target be raised to 4%).
At the time Professor Rogoff first made his proposal, I had expressed great appreciation for his judiciousness in selecting this policy. However, with the further benefit of twenty months' worth of hindsight on the global economic crisis, I have to say now that the policy of raising the Fed's medium-term target for inflation would be quite counter-productive. Furthermore, the situation is worrisome since, based on the Fed Chairman's recent presentation at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming conference, one might expect that Professor Rogoff's proposal could actually become the Fed's policy. I explain why this proposal should not be implemented in Section III.
Thirdly, Professor Joseph Stiglitz has written a timely article on the mortgage crisis named "Fixing America's Broken Housing Market" on Project Syndicate. The issues involved in the mortgage crisis are understood much better now than they were before President Obama took office. For over thirty months now, the government and the Fed have been propping up the housing market in various ways under the banner of Keynesian policies. However, the widespread prediction of massive losses for the Democrats in this November's Congressional elections is strongly signalling the return of conservative policies within the next few months. One can be reasonably sure that cost-cutting and deficit reduction are going to take the center-stage because the problem of exploding national debt is considered very important by the electorate, as the polls indicate.
On the other hand, without the continued large scale spending of the government and the Fed on the housing market, there would essentially be no housing market, as Professor Stiglitz observes. Every indication is that housing is going to be a big flash-point of contention between opposing political forces within a few months after the coming Congressional elections. It is for this reason that Professor Stiglitz's article is timely and wise. I do not have much further to say on the housing market however. I had commented on it at length in my article "A New Perspective on the Global Economic Crisis" where I had proposed a price-adjustment mechanism between the security-owners and property-owners.
II. A matter of another 500 billion dollars a year
The federal budget deficits/surpluses during President George W. Bush's 8 year term were as follows: FY2001 - $128.2 billion surplus, FY2002 - $157.8 billion deficit, FY2003 - $377.6 billion deficit, FY2004 - $412.7 billion deficit, FY2005 - $318.3 billion deficit, FY2006 - $248.2 billion deficit, FY2007 - $160.7 billion deficit, FY2008 - $458.6 billion deficit (Note that the FY2001 budget was proposed to the Congress in 2000 by President Clinton and the FY2009 budget was proposed by President Bush in 2008). In view of the these budget figures, at the time that President Obama won the November 2008 election, it seemed reasonable to expect a budget deficit (excluding stimulus expenditure) of $400 billion to $500 billion for FY2009.
Since there was widespread awareness in the political system that the severity of the recession that had hit the American economy was unprecedented in the post-Second-World-War period, there was strong political support for a large stimulus bill. So the enactment of the stimulus bill (then projected to be at $787-billion spread over a two year period) would have allowed for an additional expenditure of about $400 billion for FY2009, over and beyond the expected deficit of $400 billion to $500 billion mentioned above. So, this would have meant that the particular severity of the ongoing economic crisis would have resulted in an all-time high budget deficit that was between $800 billion and $900 billion for FY2009.
However, the actual budget deficit for FY2009 was just over 1.4 trillion dollars. In hindsight, this overshooting of more than 500 billion dollars a year, projected to continue for several years starting from FY2009, was one major surprise that the political system could not handle. Strangely, there is no discussion at all about this budgetary shortfall in Professor Christina Romer's farewell speech. However, it is in budgetary shortfalls that we see a fundamental divergence between the functioning of the political system and that of the economic system. The 2006 Congressional election and the 2008 Presidential election testified to the ability of the political system to return vastly changed preferences of the voting public than in the earlier six years, 2000-06.
In contrast, the economic system did not have the necessary mathematical tools to shift its functioning from conservativism to liberalism in such a short time. It could not effectively raise awareness about the rapid changes in government spending and tax receipts. The government publishes monthly budgetary figures every month. Moreover, an additional shortfall in tax receipts in view of the severity of the recession was to be expected. So, by the summer of 2009, it should have been obvious that the budget deficit for FY2009 was going to be of gigantic proportions.
In fact, it was in the summer of 2009 that the Obama policy advisors were faced with a watershed decision whether to continue to concentrate all their efforts on the economic recovery, or to focus on their remaining priorities like health care, renewable energy and financial regulation. Even as the Obama economics team was called upon to make this crucial decision, the team simply did not have the necessary mathematical tools for guiding them through this decision. Under the dominating influence of the Chicago School of Economics, all the major developments in economics in the last half-century had been made with the twin assumptions of minimizing the state's power, and making all economic decisions on a quantitative basis.
As Professor Romer has mentioned repeatedly in her farewell speech, the path that the American economy has been taking during the current economic crisis is territory that is completely unchartered for professional economists. The precision and speed that are necessary pre-requisites for making effective decisions about an advanced economy could only be delivered with the mathematical models that economists had come to use in the last few decades. Unfortunately, these models did not allow for the immediate adoption of full-fledged Keynesian economics, an area of research that had been out of favor for more than forty years. Besides, concepts from Keynesian theory -- like animal spirits, demand management, pump-priming, consumer confidence -- are inherently difficult to quantify, especially so in this new age of globalization.
As a result, the Obama economics team simply resorted to plain old sloganeering against austerity measures. Furthermore, the team regularly conjured up scenarios of the recurrence of the Great Depression, for which it received widespread support from the community of professional economists. The team maintained strongly that this was no time to worry about deficits and debt. The conviction with which the economics team advocated Keynesian policies was buttressed by the Fed's own drastic policy shift towards Keynesianism in the last couple of years. Consequently, the politicians was re-assured that the economic crisis was being brought under control, since the correct policy framework had been found.
So, the political system moved onto the problems on health care, environment and financial regulation. This is not to say that the politicians are without blame. As it so happened, the Obama administration along with the liberals in Congress rammed through a massive health care legislation in a period of nine months starting from the late summer of 2009. A series of townhall meetings to discuss the health care agenda only lent credence to the suspicion that agreements made before-hand between vested interests were being shoved down the throats of the unsuspecting voting-public.
By the end of 2009, however, the Obama administration had realized that its policy agenda had been seriously stalled. In the intervening six months, the voting-public had been made aware of exploding public debt through the precise mathematical tools that the monetarists had developed over the last half-a-century. So, the Obama administration began to soft-pedal on environmental issues. And it squandered its historic opportunity to make progress on environmental issues during the Copenhagen meeting. These events are recorded in detail by Professor Jeffrey Sachs in his two articles written at that time -- "Obama in Chains" and "Obama Undermines the UN Climate Change Process" -- on Project Syndicate.
Now, it may be argued that the politicians did have some expertise on health care, because this topic had been regularly debated by them for the past 40 years or so. However, each voter has adequate experience about health care only from her own individual perspective. The health care facilities for individuals from different strata of society are vastly different. So the health care legislations that the Obama administration was proposing needed a lot of public debate so that individual voters could become familiar with the choices being made. So, the quick-fire approach to health care legislation that the liberal majority adopted ended up getting the disapproval of the voters.
While the Obama administration and the Congressional Democrats had the excuse that they were quite familiar with the issues of health care even if the voters weren't, they could not claim any such thing with financial regulation. No expertise whatsoever was available in the political system on the economic and financial issues afflicting the American economy. Yet, liberal politicians saw an opportunity to channel popular anger, against the bailout of finance firms, in their favor. For over two years now, the various financial regulatory organizations -- the FDIC, the Treasury, the Fed, the SEC, along with the Congress, the Presidency and state-level regulatory agencies -- have been wrangling among themselves for the powers to regulate the finance industry.
Thus faced with waning public disapproval on account of the economic recovery, health care and environmental issues, the politicians decided to quickly enact financial regulation. They fancied that legislating new financial regulation would be the ticket to the resurrection of their own political fortunes. They drafted nearly 2,400 pages of financial regulation within a few months. Most legislators had not even read all these 2,400 pages but they had voted on them, to make drastic changes in the finance industry. However, the voting-public is too smart and it has sealed its complete disapproval of liberal politicians, as the polls clearly indicate. The events described in this section were the main causes for the surrealistically rapid decline in the public approval for liberal policies within a short period of 20 months (Jan 2009 -- Aug 2010).
III. Fed's medium-term inflation target
The first main argument in favor of Professor Rogoff's proposal is that in the last two decades, professional economists have gained significant confidence on soft-landing an economy that has been over-stimulated through Keynesian policies. On the one hand, the natural rate theory on inflation and employment from the 1970s analyzes the consequences of monetary and fiscal policies that are overly stimulative. On the other hand, the experience of Japan's sluggish economic performance for the last two decades has been an experimental ground for stimulative policies, and Japan's experience paints a picture of too little stimulation.
Professor Paul Krugman has been commenting repeatedly these days that he foresaw much of the troubles in the American economy. For example, in http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/one-model-to-rule-them-all/, he says "I was, in a way, ready for this particular mess: a decade earlier, trying to make sense of Japan's woes, I had thought through the economics of a liquidity trap ... ... That basic framework led me to conclude that the Obama stimulus was much too small; that the huge increase in the monetary base wouldn't be inflationary; that interest rates would stay low as long as the economy remained depressed, despite huge government borrowing."
The second main argument in Professor Rogoff's favor is that the Fed has a really effective infrastructure to monitor the economy closely. If the economy was to pick up robust growth at any time, the Fed's stimulation efforts are calibrated to wind down smoothly, so that the run-away inflation of the 70s can be avoided. The Fed's Beige Book and the six-weekly reports from its 12 regional branches provide up-to-date information about various economic indicators. Moreover, the Fed's empirical data-gathering efforts are supplemented by the analysis of many professional experts from academia and the private sector. It is with the help of this monitoring infrastructure that the Fed Chairman and the Treasury were able to rapidly inject trillions of dollars into the economy as soon as the financial crisis hit in 2008 (as if dropping wads of dollars from a helicopter).
Furthermore, the Fed was able to quickly move the trillions of dollars on its balance sheet between different parts of the economy according to where it thought relief was most needed. At the beginning of the financial crisis, the Fed directed its resources towards direct lending to the financial sector (term auction credit, commercial paper purchase) and currency swap agreements with foreign central banks. As time went on, these programs were shut down without much trouble and the money was re-directed to purchasing mortgage securities and treasury securities. These purchases helped to bring down the long term interest rates, which in turn, has helped homeowners to meet their monthly mortgage payments and keep their homes from foreclosure.
So the Fed does have formidable tools to micro-manage the economy. Then what is the problem with Professor Rogoff's proposal for announcing that the Fed's medium-term (4 to 12 years) target for inflation is 4% or above? To analyze Professor Rogoff's proposal we need to observe that this proposal fits hand-in-glove with Professor Krugman's program of 'massive fiscal spending and loose monetary policy in order to stimulate the economy, as long as inflation and long-term interest rates stay low'. There are several problems with this approach.
Firstly, let us consider the opportunity cost. As we noted in the previous section, the liberals have been stubbornly adhering to their refusal to rein in budgetary shortfalls under the excuse that a recession is no time for worrying about debt and deficits. Whatever the merit of this argument, one cost it does have is that it foregoes the chance for the government to retire older debt (which were issued at high interest rates) by issuing new debt (at interest rates that are very low at present). Instead, all the new debt is going towards increased spending. In this situation, raising the Fed's medium-term inflation target to 4% is only going to signal to the market that there is no plan whatsoever to reduce debt servicing costs.
Secondly, even the Fed does not have complete control on the way its funds can be put to work on the economy. For example, for several months in 2009, the reserves that the banks had with the Fed had reached upwards of $800 billion. Most of this money was meant to be leant out to the business sector to stimulate growth, but the sluggishness in the economy precluded any prospects of credit expansion. This was the classic case of the 'liquidity trap' and the Fed was simply 'pushing on a string'. We saw in the previous section how overshooting of targets to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars could have serious political consequences. The same phenomenon is in work here.
Thirdly, even if Professor Krugman claims that he has found new ways to deal with the liquidity trap (see quote above), deflation is not something that the economics profession has any serious expertise to deal with. The natural rate theory gives some foundation for dealing with increasing inflation. Japan's example gives a lower bound for stimulative policies. Other than these two extreme situations, there is no particularly insightful modern treatment of the phenomenon of deflation. The response to the economic crisis from professional economists demonstrates clearly that to deal with deflation, modern economics relies totally on Keynesian theory which is more than 70 years old now.
Fourthly, let us assume, for argument's sake, that price stability can be achieved, in the medium term (4 to 12 years), using the Fed's approach of calibrating the expansion of its monetary policy by just the right amount to ward off deflation. Even so, in a break from the tradition of so many decades past, this price stability would no longer be guaranteed to result in robust growth. This is because the classical models of growth which relied on steady gains in productivity brought about by technological progress, and ready availability of abundant natural resources were all reasonable assumptions 70 years ago. But now these assumptions are no longer valid, and there is no reliable theoretical developments in growth theory that can predict how a modern economy is supposed to grow in the 21st century.
Fifthly, this prevailing ambiguity about the long-term drivers of economic growth has resulted in the relative decline of business investment as a spending priority. The stimulative efforts, that the liberals in office have been directing at the economy, have been focused mostly on consumer demand. Professor Robert Reich makes frequent appearance in the media to emphasis that the most severe problem in the American economy is the drop in consumer demand. In fact, there has been a high-profile debate among economists recently as to whether the causes of the sustained high levels of unemployment that the economy would be facing for several years are structural or cyclical. The Keynesians are arguing now that the main cause is cyclical downturn in consumer demand. Just two years ago, the Keynesians led by Professor Krugman were declaring that they were going to use domestic savings to re-engineer the structure of the American economy. In particular they were going to resuscitate the entire manufacturing sector through a renewed industrial policy.
Sixthly, the pre-occupation with massive efforts at stimulating consumer demand (as long as prices and interest rates remain low), has resulted in the liberals taking isolationist and protectionist views on the American economy. They believe that the recovery of the American economy can be engineered purely through the government's re-investment of domestic savings. Especially in view of the coming political elections, the liberals have been ratcheting up their rhetoric on international trade. These views are definitely counter-productive for fighting deflationary pressures. Instead, by engaging the rapidly growing economies of Asia and Latin America in a constructive manner, America can ensure robust economic growth for itself. As a result, foreign policy and globalization are two major phenomena that could bring much larger benefits for the future of the American economy than having the Fed use all its tools in the pursuit of a medium-term inflation-target of 4%.
winstonsmith 02:09 29 Sep 10
Professor Stiglitz has once again correctly highlighted that markets are less efficient than many economists believe. However, I do tend to disagree with the cause of the inefficiency. Stiglitz argues that it is securitisation that has created this problem. There is nothing wrong with packaging up loans per se, the issue was the packaging up of highly leveraged loans and the risk weights assigned to those assets. In Europe, mortgage bonds have been used to fund mortgages for decades, however their loan to value ratios (LTV) tend to be lower than 60%. The main issue causing market inefficiency is a fiscal issue. The way property assets are taxed encourages investors to invest as real estate prices rise. This encourages more investors into the market which in turn creates the feedback loop so well described by Robert Schiller. Until the government decides to tackle this fiscal issue (which would be highly unpopular), the market will remain incredibly inefficient and as Professor Stiglitz points out will require billions of tax payers’ dollars in funding. If you don’t like the status quo you can actually make a large profit from this market inefficiency. Perhaps if investors make large profits from poorly functioning markets it might spur the government into action.
http://www.thehamiltonsociety.com/blog/_archives/2010/4/13/4504188.html
scottryan1 12:25 08 Oct 10
This problem is easily fixed. read on
THIS IS IN AU $, IT = OUT TO BE THE SAME ANYWAY. The first thing the government will do is start a new $22,000 first home, but, used home grant.
The government will buy $50 billion dollars of solar panels, in big bulk, to get a good deal. The government will then include a electric hot water system, that they will buy in mass bulk to save mass money. The government will also buy a electric stoves in mass bulk, making it, buy 1 million, get 50,000 for free. so it works out to cost them $700 instead of $1,000. same goes for a hot water system, they buy 1 million worth of hot water system, and pay $1,000 dollars, instead of $1,400, or save even more.
The government will get a mass deal on $50-$200 billion dollars worth of solar panels.
The government will make that, the people get $20,000 worth of solar panels, that is in big bulk too, it should = $30,000 worth.
They will also get a $1,000 electric hot water system & a $1,000 stove / oven, it's all gotten in big bulk too. Save mass money & start lots of jobs.
Now mass people can buy houses. If people get free solar panels, they don’t pay electricity bills. If they get free electric stoves and hot water systems, they don’t get gas bills. so people will save on average $3,600 a year, or more. so people will save about $300 a month.
If people save $300 a month, people on minimum wages could by a home / get a home loan easy. People that get better then minimum wages, could get a home loan easy.
If people save $300 a month, they could pay off a houses easy. Each month there morgage payments / home loan payments, will be $890 a month. if they save that money from no gas bills or power bills, they can take $300 dollars a month, off there loan repayments.
If people save that $300 a month, there repayments would be $590 a month instead of $890. Now People pay more then that a month on renting a house. even if it cost them now $990 a month for loan repayments, it will cost them $690, still way cheaper then renting, and would hit the banks amount of money you need to get a loan and afford to pay it off.
Houses are so cheap now, & they will get to take a extra $300 off there home loan repayments every month, so mass people will buy houses now.
If the government does this, mass houses will be sold, then they will start a, brand new first home solar grant.
The government would first / at same time, spend $200 billion $ on buying houses, so they can control the housing market.
The government will buy 200 billion $ worth of houses all over America, in key areas. The government would then rent 90% of them houses out, fixing a renting crises at the same time.
Once The government does that, they control the houses market / interest rates, by relicing houses onto the market, if the prices of houses go way up.
The government can control the housing market by relicing houses onto the market, by flooding housesto lower the price.
The government can also rise the prices of houses, by buying up all the houses after they buy lots of houses, & start mass houses being sold.
As long as they buy them all of them houses cheap now, they will not have to buy many latter to control the housing market.
So many people will buy houses now, along with the government.
Right Now if people go to buy a house, there is not even 2 people bidding on a house, that creates no compaction no bidding, no market. that's why the housing market is no more. If the government starts a used first time home buyers grant, and the government spend $200 billion $ on buying houses, the house prices will go up a big % over 2 years. once they do that, there will not be many houses on the market after that, and there will be 20 people bidding on 1 of the limited houses for sale in 2 - 5 years, & that creates compaction, that creates houses going up in prices.
If peoples houses go up, many people will sell there houses and buy a different house. right now there houses are worth nothing, so they can not move or buy a different house, its just the way it goes / works. if your house cost you with a loan $600,000, you can not sell it for $200,000, nor would you even if you paid $600,000 cash with your own money / no home loan. once the prices of houses goes up, many people will sell there houses and move, and buy a different house, as them people sell there house, other people buy there house and sells there’s as well, showing the housing market mass houses sales, but really, they are just swapping houses, but the real estates will show mass houses being sold.
So first the government will start a used first home grant, that will give people free solar panels & electric stoves & hot water systems. That will take away there power bills & gas bills giving them a extra $300 plus to pay off the home loans.
The government will also buy $200 billion $ worth of houses, to control the housing market, by relicing house onto the market if they get to dear, that will lower house prices if they flood houses onto the market and then do this to control it properly.
In 1 to 2 years time, the government will start a brand new first home solar grant, that will start more mass houses being built.
To control the housing / market, the government will also need more houses been built, to free up demand, or there will not be houses for sale, and houses prices will be way way to high.
The government can control the housing market, as long as after all them used / 2 million houses become limited, more houses are built to help them.
If the government does not start a first home solar grant, they will lose control or the housing market / house prices. That because all the old / used houses will be sold, there for there is no houses for sale, or only had fulls seeing, will 100 people bidding on 1 house.
If that was to happen, the government could only relic house for a amount of time, unto they are all sold, then they would lose control of the house prises / interest rates. Thai is why they will mix it up, to stop that from happening.
So the government will spend $200 billion dollars on buying houses, that will only allow them to relic houses up to a point / they will run out in 4 years time, because there is to much demand / everyone has got a house, buying up all the houses on the market now. so the government will mix it up. The first year it will be a, first home used home buyers grants, used house grant, & at the same time the government will mop up $200 billion $ worth of houses. then after 1 year, it will be brand new first home grant, that 0r 60% used houses & 40% new houses, to get people buying up used houses to first, to rise the house prises a bit, then the other 40% will be new houses being built, to make shore the government will not lose control the housing prices, buy relicing some houses to lower the prices a bit, if they have to lower the price in a bad time.
So you first what to get most of the houses flooded on the market now sold. that will rise the house prices a bit.
After that happens, you want new houses to be built to start mass jobs and too stabilise your control in the housing market.
The government does not want to sell all there houses to lose control of interest rates & the housing market.
If the government buys the $200 billion dollars worth of houses & starts a new used first home buyers grant, they will get 85% of them houses off the market rising the prises of houses a bit, then they start a brand new first home grant to stop people buying up all the houses, sending the prices up 400%, because all the house are sold, & there is non left. So thy control it buy stoping a used first home grant once 85% of used houses are sold, & starting a first home solar grant, to have more houses on the market, letting them control the prices, by relicing houses to lower the prices, and buy making people buy brand new houses after 90% of the old houses are sold, that would stop all of the houses being sold, that will stop rising the prices of houses so so high, & interest rates.
So if you start a new house grants, people will only buy a new house, stooping every old / houses being sold, that stops sending the prices way to high, that you want to control. new houses are being built, so used houses are not all being sold now.
If the government just keeps just doing used house first home solar grants, all the houses would be sold, and they would have to sell off all there houses very fast, losing control of the market.' if they let mass / 92% of used houses get sold, then start brand new home grants, they will not need to sell of there houses. the grant is now for new houses only, not used houses, so they will leave 8% of houses free on the market. that would send prices up a bit, but there is still 8% of houses on the market, and they can then relic a extra 7% to bring the houses back down to what they want.
The GOVERMENT only let people build houses with the grant, letting them control the housing market forever just about. if used house start to drop off leaving say, 19% on the market, they just change the first used home grant, too brand new house solar grant. this is the way you fix the housing market and control the prices. it will work and start a mass houses being sold, then latter mass new houses being built, that start mass building jobs. the point is to control it, if everyone buys a house in 7 years, the housing market will full. control it and house prices. this is the only way America and all allied country’s can get out of this housing mess, but at the same time, it will start a housing boom, why going green as well, why starting mass jobs that would more then kick start Americas / the west's economy's. it would see a surge in the economy / big growth. we must takeaway the power and gas bills. that will allow people to pay off used houses then brand new houses on minimum wages, and people that get more then that, can also build new houses with ease.
The point is.1, they start a used home solar grate to get mass houses sold, & take away gas & power bills to allow mass people afford houses. they also buy mass houses to control the prices.2, they then start a brand new home solar grants, when to many houses are sold, to stop a housing market with no houses / house are 2 million dollars each / to dear, and so the government can control the market.3,once they force people to buy a new houses, the demand will drop off & all used houses will not be sold, there for the government just relices some of there houses, dropping the prices.4. They control it buy relicing houses, & by start a new houses grant that everyone will have to do, to afford the home loan. That lets them own 25% of the houses left on the market for sale, because everyone is now building new houses because they have to / save $300 a month because that’s the grant now.5. All the government has to do is, dump 10% of there houses extra onto the market, know one will buy them because the first home solar grant, is on new houses. there for the prices will drop along with interest rates.6. They can make it what ever they want the price to be, as well as interest rates. No one can afford a houses with out the grant just about, & any one selling there houses once the price goes up, will be buying the other person house that did the same thing. First home grant, if you own a house and sell it, you can not get the grant, first home buyer grant.
In the end they will do second brand new home solar grants, but that would not be for a very long time.
creating mass jobs The government also need to cut taxes on each company. just $750 for a small company, so he can hire 1 more worker for free. bigger company's can hire 20 more people for free. the key is to forcing de-faco partners on the doll / government payments, to get a job first. in Australia they would get about AU$1,350 every 2 weeks. if the man got a job at, well say he earns AU$750 A week, they would only get $80 child / kid government payment that everyone gets. he would pull in $1,580 every 2 weeks. the government would save $1,220 a fortnight. if she gets a job as well, they would be way better off, but because he earns that much money, there pay would be cut by 96%. the key is to target the jobs to people that get the most money on government payments. first at least 1 person in a de-facto relationship must get a job. but really both of them a job first. if the government got them both a job, not only would they save $1,300 a fortnight, they would also get taxes from there wages / work pay. the government would start a new daycare rebate of 7% of the cost at the end of the year. they get that money 2 weeks before Christmas. that will also see big spending’s at Christmas time, flexing the economy. Also force everyone to put AU$3-5 extra into there supper fund. that money can only be invested in there country too. times that buy 220 million people, times 52 / a year. that would start mass mass jobs as well.


farfetched 08:19 09 Sep 10
Far-fetched Professor Stiglitz, but you hit the nail right on the head...
The swing to bring the forces towards investing into the small Ma & Pa(s) small businesses is the real deal to bring the recovery full circle where it belongs. This would include for certain, the mid-tier corporations in the Russell 5000 or IWM as the example of companies that would put many jobless folks back to work.
An example of companies that have 400 employees to date and are producing 34% or greater quarter over quarter sets the stage of why I use it as an example.
Look close at ISSI with upgrades from two Analyst firms Noble Financial and Capstone raising price targets with stock issue having a nice Gap up showing support under 7.80 -7.90.
Great options play for the Sept. Oct. and Jan 11 plays. This company also has become a great M&A candidate.
The markets decide the direction of ultimate recovery and support for the infrastructure of business commerce.
I have been pushing Professor Stiglitz formulas of the adaptation of using the Human Unit in the wellbeing of the economic sustainability.
The other concern keeps raising the flag when it comes to the "Demographic Economics Effects". Demographic Economics having an enormous affect on future markets due to the shrinking size of the Human Unit work force to support all the financial forecasts of so many economist and financial analyst.
Remember the conditions of what allows retirement of the one human unit to be supported by at least 4-6 human units to allow the one to consume and spend during a retirement phase of their living.
Frankly, reading many of my posts. It is time we end abortions and pass sweeping laws that allow us to stay clear of this huge problem coming our way by the 2040(s0 to 2060(s) as mathematically meeting the standards of occurring and causing the outcomes as given by many noted minds starting with Harry Dent and Dr. Jacqueline Kasun.
Until my next post, keep God in the Equation of the Human Unit and this is what leads to a true sustainable recovery as sought by so many nations.
God Bless...
J.G.