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...foster the real estate bubble, after all. Are the same companies that didn't know when to stop prematurely hopping back in? The number of existing homes for sale has fallen over the past year, but we still have a 9.4-month supply on the market - nearly double the rate that's desirable. With desperate homeowners trying to sell, and foreclosures still piling up, are more houses what we need? (See pictures of high-end homes that won't sell...
...long while. Since the end of 2007, builders have been selling more houses than they've been putting up. In the first three months of 2009, there were 52,000 single-family homes started. Over the same period of time, 87,000 were sold. At the current rate of sale, all the new homes on the market would be gone in 8.8 months. That's still above a more normal four- to six-month supply - but taking into account how long it takes to ramp up new construction, it's not necessarily an illogical time to start building. Consider...
...what would help him do his job, the thing he most wants from a lender when he sends in an application for a loan modification - asking for something like a reduced interest rate that could help keep a family in its home - is simple. "I just want to know someone is looking at it," he says. Often, that hasn't been the case. Banks simply don't call back...
...might also want to consider the most ham-handed pay regulation of all - progressive income taxes. It cannot be entirely coincidental that the great explosion in executive and Wall Street pay began about the same time that Washington was slashing taxes on the highest earners. The top federal marginal rate plummeted from 70% in 1980 to 28% in 1988. (It's now 35%.) Some CEOs who are critical of the compensation status quo but who don't want government telling them how to pay people point to taxes as a possible answer. "I wish income was more equitable," the head...
...obesity rate rises, it's not just waistlines that are expanding. The cost of medical care has ballooned, according to a new report in the policy and research journal Health Affairs. The study's authors compared medical data from 1998 and 2006 and found that obese Americans--who now make up a quarter of the U.S. population--are responsible for a $40 billion jump in annual medical spending. Obese people spend $1,400 more a year than people of normal weight on medical services, according to research data. Medicare doles out $600 more for obese beneficiaries; Medicaid pays $230 more...