by Guest Author Frederick J. Sheehan Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States Treasury Department is a harbinger of changing times. The institutional mind has been trained to operate within the framework of the Capital Asset Pricing Model… more »

Fed President Plosser, a voting member of the FOMC, indicated in his speech in Helsinki last week that the "hurdle for QE3" is high. Chairman Bernanke has voiced a similar opinion. There is considerable ink that has been devoted to the soft patch the U.S economy is current experiencing which almost always includes mention of the Fed's view that justification for QE3 is more stringent than QE2. more »

Coming into 2011 we suggested there were three major themes that would play out in the course of this year. We thought the U.S. economy would slow, particularly around mid-year. Most states would have to tighten their budgets by cutting spending and jobs, and raising taxes, before their 2012 fiscal year began on July 1. On June 30, the end of the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing would create some uncertainty since it represents a de facto tightening of monetary policy. The U.S. economy has not achieved a self-sustaining level of growth in our opinion, and these headwinds were expected to weigh on growth in the second half of 2011. more »

   Guest Author:  Keith Jurow, author of  MVP Housing Market Report Editor's note:  This was written nearly one year ago but is still very timely today. In 2000, an 81-year old widow named Wenonah Blevins had fallen behind by $814.50 on homeowners as… more »

The Federal government is about to settle the ForeclosureGate affair, according to a report in the New York Times on April 9. The Times noted that twelve million homes will be lost by 2012. Home equity values are down by $5.6 trillion since the real estate crash.The draft agreement released to American Banker shows another corporate-friendly deal designed to maintain the incumbent perpetrators at the expense of the people. more »