The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

Did you hear that sound today on Capitol Hill? It was the sound of Congress flushing another $350 billion of tax payer money down the toilet. The Senate approved Bush's request of Obama's request for the second tranche of $350 billion of TARP money to be made available for the Treasury's disposal...

For the past three years economists and the media have been proclaiming that homes were simply too expensive, that nobody could afford to buy a home, and that  once housing became more affordable and home values declined, more Americans would be able to achieve the dream of homeownership.  Well, ...

God Bless Chesley Sullenberger and the entire crew of US Airways Flight 1549 for their heroic act to saves lives under enormous pressure.

As the real estate market sinks further into a depression and continues to drag the broader economy, financial system, and credit markets down with it, you would think that a housing stimulus plan that would attempt to bring stability to home values would be the cornerstone if not at least a sign...

Nothing gives you a better sense of the health of the real estate market than the relationship between the supply and demand for real estate, in other words the number of properties for sale (supply) relative to the number of properties sold (demand).  This relationship is referred to as the mont...

Is there a third bailout for Citigroup in the making? On October 13, after Paulson had abandoned the original intent of the TARP program, Citigroup became one of the first nine banks to receive capital injections from the Treasury; for Citigroup it was to the tune of $25 billion. Just over a mont...

I continue to read blogs by mortgage brokers that tell me that the lower mortgage rates are having a significant impact on purchase applications, really? As I have blogged about before when mortgage rates were hovering near six percent, I didn't think that lower mortgage rates would have a signif...

I have written a couple of times about the "real" unemployment rate and how it is worse than the numbers that are being reported by the mainstream media.  Specifically, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U-6 unemployment number for December of 2008 is 13.2% compared to the reported ...

I continue to stumble upon posts on Active Rain from disgruntled agents and mortgage brokers alike expressing their displeasure with the "media". That if it weren't for the "media", their business and the economy would be much better off. That the "media" is to blame for consumers being reluctant...

Several days ago I had written about the real unemployment rate and why this number best reflects the current job market, and yet despite this, very rarely does the media talk about this number.   It's kind of like that "crazy uncle" that a lot of families wish they didn't have, but they do, and ...