Word: reals
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Warren Buffett said that the real estate business his company Berkshire Hathaway owns is seeing a small improvement in housing demand. The National Association of Realtors seemed to confirm his observations when it announced that the index for pending home sales went up in March. This data helped send the stock market higher as it stays true to form by rising on the most modest news...
...single biggest enemy to a housing recovery may be the fact that there is no increase in real wages. The failing economy has ruined any chance that the average worker will make more this year than he did last. Many people will probably make less this year than they did in 2008, although the government figures are not precise enough to show that. Anecdotally it is almost certainly true. Earning a higher wage with unemployment more than 10% has to be nearly impossible in some of the largest states including Florida, Michigan, and California...
...wishful begin to play tricks. A small piece of economic information, like one month of very modestly improved housing numbers or one week of a slight decrease in jobless claims, sets off a chain reaction. If one set of numbers is OK, the next set will be better. Real estate prices will stop falling everywhere, if they stop falling in hard hit Nevada. (See pictures of Las Vegas...
...There's pretty widespread agreement that the recovery, when it comes, won't be robust. "Even after a recovery gets underway, the rate of growth of real economic activity is likely to remain below its longer-run potential for a while," said Bernanke in his testimony to the Joint Economic Committee on Tuesday. That means unemployment will keep rising even after the economy has stopped shrinking. And if unemployment keeps rising, consumer spending won't rebound strongly, bank-loan losses will keep rising and a recessionary relapse isn't out of the question. The next monthly employment report, due Friday...
...Then there's all that bad debt. We've now mostly worked through the subprime mortgage mess that started this whole debacle, but lots more losses - from prime mortgages, credit cards, commercial real estate, you name it - are still to come. Morgan Stanley economist Richard Berner estimated on Tuesday that even in the most bullish case, banks and other lenders have only recognized about half the $1.7 trillion in loan losses they're likely to suffer over the course of the downturn. In Berner's "bear" case, losses will top $4 trillion...