The Housing Crisis and Washington's political and ineffective response

Today, one of the Treasury boys actually said that, "... the nature of the housing crisis has changed over the past year...". This shows how completely clueless they are at Treasury and the Fed (or more likely, how politics rules over economic common sense). The housing crisis exists today for the same reason it existed two years ago: the value of housing has fallen such that too many homeowners have lost a substantial portion of their net worth the fall of their homes' values such that they now have no equity or negative equity in their homes. Compounding this loss of net worth is their losses suffered in the securities markets.The negative effect of this situation is compounded by the high real unemployment which approaches 20%. Thus, while we have an over supply of homes, we also have a dramatic undersupply of equity available to buy a home. Compounding this, it is virtually impossible to get a mortgage in excess of $730,000, and many homes in the US are at values in excess of $1 million. Sadly, while Washington has "saved" the banking system, they have not even scratched the surface of the housing crisis, and political posturing which includes statements like another one made today, "...only $50 billion of TARP went to housing...", only serve to scare the heck out of any semi-informed individual. My reference here is to the various Treasury maneuvers that have moved some 90% of US home mortgages to the GSE's who now have an unlimited pen from the Treasury and who have used it to dramatically increase the proportion of sub-prime loans on their books in the past two years. So in fact, Washington's total response to the housing crisis in the past two years has been enormous, but political and ineffective.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Banks and Fear

We had predicted that the fear of default by Dubai's various property companies on $26 billion would prove to be unfounded, and now Dubai has shown us to be correct. Dubai new proposal offers what must be viewed as a very lender-friendly deal on the Dubai World and Nakheel debt. Dubai now offers to convert its $10.1 billion debt claims on Dubai World and Nakheel into equity, thus subordinating its claim to other creditors. In addition, Dubai will inject $9.5 billion of fresh capital of which $3.8 billion will come from its own resources and $5.7 billion from a loan from Abu Dhabi. This can only mean that Abu Dhabi approves of and supports this newest proposal. Going even further (in the right direction) Dubai says that if the lenders approve the deal, then holders of Nakheel's Sukuk bonds (2010 & 2011 maturities) will be paid in full and on time. All of this goes to the point that UAE is not interested in having anything derail its plans, not a small part of which have Dubai as the new "Beirut" for European and Gulf residents and an important financial and business center for the region.