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From our sister blog Investorazzi.com this morning:

“Investor Letters: Bill Gross”

“The new normal will not be investor-friendly unless your forecasting dial is turned to ‘Pollyanna’ or your intelligence quotient is significantly less than 100.”

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Quotes For The Week

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I read a funny piece on Bloomberg.com this morning about reactions to the overuse of the phrase “green shoots” as it relates to a potential U.S. economic recovery…

“These may be the two most overused and annoying words of my investment career… Every possible sign of a recovery is anointed with the phrase.”

-John Mauldin, president of Arlington, Texas-based Millennium Wave Advisors

“Turning into daffodils.”

-Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group

“Housing is still a drag on the economy… It may be green shoots, but they are growing slowly. It’s moss.”

-David Coard, head of fixed-income trading in New York at Williams Capital Group

“We’re not seeing them… I had a cataract operation in my left eye about a month ago and I thought, maybe now I’ll be able to see some green shoots.”

-Warren Buffett

“People talk a lot about these green shoots… I see more yellow weeds than green shoots.”

-Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University and chairman of RGE Monitor

“It is more a comment on the human condition and the innate need for optimism.”

-David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Toronto-based Gluskin Sheff & Associates

Bloomberg’s Matthew Benjamin added the following in regards to Rosenberg:

A substitute phrase may also be needed if the U.S. economy slows down again later this year, said Rosenberg, the former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co.

“We will not very likely see ‘brown manure’ as the catchy horticultural replacement to green shoots,” he said.

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From our sister blog Investorazzi.com this morning:

“Warren Buffett Warns Of Problems With Inflation, Dollar”

What we’re doing raises the profitability significantly of very significant inflation down the road. Not this year, next year, maybe the year after, but we have taken actions, and they were appropriate actions, to fight the war we were in that started with a vengeance last September. In taking those actions, we’ve applied medicine dosages to a patient that’s never been done before except in wartime. And it will have consequences. And nobody knows exactly what they will be and nobody knows how effective we will be draining a system that we’ve been flooding. But the probability of significant inflation has really gone up.”

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Quote For The Week

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Marc Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, appeared on the Alex Jones Show this past Tuesday. Dr. Faber, also known as “Dr. Doom” by the press, is famous for advising his clients to get out of the U.S. stock market one week before the October 1987 crash and for predicting the current financial crisis. The Swiss-born investment adviser told Jones and his listeners:

Basically, we had two systems until the end of the 1970s in the world. Essentially, free market capitalism— the market economy— and the planning economy. And, as you know, under communism and socialism, central planners totally failed with their policies to create sustainable economic growth. And if you traveled to Russia in 1980 or to China in 1980, these countries were really impoverished. And, the U.S., in particular, today is moving towards an interventionist policy of the government moving into the economy and trying to fix the economy left, right, and center. In the extreme case, you would go essentially to the planning economy. But it’s not going to happen right away. But, basically, the more the government has an influence in the economy, and intervenes in the economy, the current crisis is not the failure of free markets, it’s the failure of government intervention. One of the big interventions was obviously Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which essentially had cheaper access to funds and the banking system. These were the big bankruptcies in America, in terms of size, and also other regulatory— the intervention into the money market and the supplies of money by the Federal Reserve post 2001, also, as I had just mentioned, created a problem. It’s not that the free market had failed, it’s the interventions by the government that failed. And now, these failed policies are even enlarged, and that is where I have a problem with the current economic policy makers

So, I think we will have high inflation, and at the same time, I think what we will eventually have, is some kind of social unrest, because I can’t believe that people will be fooled forever, by what you call crony capitalism…

It can go on for quite some time, and make things much worse. But, my view would be that within the next 5 to 10 years, when the public realizes that the economy does not improve, and possibly, in my opinion, actually deteriorate, and be faced with higher taxes, which may not be obvious but they will happen because of the large deficits, then at that stage I think there will be a social revolution, or some kind of social revolution, or the next thing the government will do to distract, or distract the attention of the people from bad economic conditions, they’ll start a war somewhere…

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David Walker: Obama’s Tax Pledge ‘Ridiculous Promise’

“Let me tell it to you straight. The. Math. Politicians. Sell. Does. Not. Work. And if we don’t start dealing with the truth soon, this country could face dire consequences.”

-David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, October 2007

Before I closed shop late last night, I stumbled on the following from Bloomberg’s Brian Faler and Nicholas Johnston:

President Barack Obama said he is “confident” that he won’t have to raise taxes on most Americans to close the budget deficit as long as the economy picks up steam.

“One of the biggest variables in this whole thing is economic growth,” the president said in an interview with Bloomberg News at the White House. “If we are growing at a robust rate, then we can pay for the government that we need without having to raise taxes.”

Obama has repeatedly said he would keep his campaign pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans while rolling back tax breaks for households making more than $250,000 a year.

“I’m confident that we don’t have to raise taxes on ordinary working families,” he said.

Now, many will argue the U.S. President still needs to build up his “street credibility” on economic matters. It remains to be seen if President Obama, despite his vast experience in other areas, can grasp the multitude and degree of the financial difficulties at hand.

That being said, consider what someone who’s already achieved “street cred” has to say about the Obama campaign pledge to cut taxes for the “ordinary working families.”

The person I’m referring to here is David M. Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States (nation’s chief accountant), former head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and current President and CEO of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

I’ve been following Mr. Walker’s career for quite some time now. Back on June 20, 2007, I wrote:

The tremendous financial burden brought on by entitlements also frightens David Walker, who is basically the nation’s accountant-in-chief. Walker is touring the United States through the 2008 elections, and according to Bloomberg, is “talking to anybody who will listen about the fiscal black hole Washington has dug itself, the ‘demographic tsunami’ that will come when the baby boom generation begins retiring and the recklessness of borrowing money from foreign lenders to pay for the operation of the U.S. government.” His speaking tour includes economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. The message they are conveying is that if the U.S government continues to conduct business as usual in the coming years, the national debt ($8.8 trillion as of today) could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation.

I added on February 26, 2008:

On February 15, David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, announced his resignation as head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Since November 9, 1998, Walker has served as the nation’s chief accountability officer, leading the GAO in its mission to help improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. Back on February 15, Richard Cowan wrote in Reuters that:

Walker repeatedly urged Congress to waste no time in reforming massive government programs, such as health care for the elderly, which will grow significantly as the U.S. population ages.

“The picture I will lay out for you… is not a pretty one and it’s getting worse with the passage of time,” the blunt-talking Walker told Congress more than once.

Despite those warnings, Congress and the White House have yet to begin cooperating on how to tackle the huge growth in health care and retirement benefit costs…

Yesterday, Bill Donoghue from MarketWatch had this to say about Walker’s departure:

Facing indifference on the Hill and unrealistic spending promises, Walker is resigning with five years still remaining in his term to head the newly formed Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Peterson, senior chairman of The Blackstone Group and Commerce secretary in the Nixon administration, has pledged an astounding startup budget for the foundation of $1 billion.

That money will attack what the foundation considers “the most substantial economic, fiscal and other sustainability challenges of our current age” — including federal entitlement programs, health care, unprecedented trade and budget deficits, low savings rates, mounting foreign debt, soaring energy consumption, an uncompetitive educational system, and the proliferation of nuclear warfare materials. Maybe Congress will listen this time.

The departing Comptroller General told Reuters:

As Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO, there are real limitations on what I can do and say in connection with key public policy issues, especially issues that directly relate to GAO’s client — the Congress.

My new position will provide me with the ability and resources to more aggressively address a range of current and emerging challenges facing our country.

MarketWatch’s Donoghue lamented:

This sounds to me like the ultimate sell signal on America…

When the nation’s best-informed watchdog resigns and few are acting on his recommendations on his “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” it’s time to reconsider over-optimistic domestic stock investments and look elsewhere, or bet against the U.S. market.

So, what is this dedicated public servant saying these days?

This past Monday, Mr. Walker appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and said the following about the Obama campaign pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans:

His pledge to not raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 was totally unrealistic, especially given $1.8 trillion-plus deficits, and growing structural deficits going forward…

It was a ridiculous promise. I don’t know why he made it. Politicians are good at making these type of promises during campaigns. Anybody that passed basic math would have known that you cannot end up dealing with our structural problems in our deficits without having more revenues.


David M. Walker Interview
CNBC Video Link

Sources:

“Obama Says ‘Robust’ Growth Will Prevent Tax Increases (Update1)”
Brian Faler, Nicholas Johnston
Bloomberg, June 16, 2009

David Walker Interview
CNBC, June 15, 2009

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Roubini, Shiller, Whitney: No Economic, Housing Recovery Just Yet

Green shoots, or deceptive weeds? From Reuters this morning:

A rebound in key U.S. economic indicators masks an underlying malaise that will likely hamstring growth for many years and keep housing and banks in a rut, several top economists said Monday.

Nouriel Roubini, president of RGE Monitor, said a recovery in risk assets like stocks and emerging markets would not last, since it had been based on unrealistic expectations for a global economic rebound.

“I see subpar, anemic, below-trend growth for the next couple of years,” Roubini said on a panel sponsored by Time Warner.

Housing expert and MIT Professor Robert Shiller was equally pessimistic, saying, with regards to the four-year housing downturn: “This thing is not over yet.”

Banking analyst Meredith Whitney said she was even more bearish than her fellow panelists, saying that better bank earnings would eventually be challenged by the toxic assets on their balance sheets.

Wonder if there’ll be more “money manure” coming from Washington down the road…

Source:

“More Pain Ahead For US Economy: Roubini, Shiller”
Reuters, June 15, 2009


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Quote For The Week

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From Jim Puplava, an investment analyst and host of the popular Financial Sense Newshour, in the third hour of his June 13 broadcast:

The President doesn’t understand economics. Look at the people in his administration. From Larry Summers to Bernanke to Christine Romer. None of these people have a job or have had a job in the real world. We have college professors running the Fed, the economy, with no idea how the economy actually works. In the end, they will have no choice but to debase the currency. It’s what we did in the thirties, it’s what we’ve done ever since 1971. That is what the world leaders, are largest creditors, and our trading partners, have come to realize…

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Peter Schiff To Run For The U.S. Senate?

The word is out that Peter Schiff, the well-known financial commentator, stockbroker, and president of Euro Pacific Capital, is considering a run for the Senate. Schiff, who’s written such books as Crash Proof 2.0 and The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, is famous for his predictions about the financial crisis in the United States. Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s Matt Phillips wrote in the “MarketBeat Blog”:

Peter Schiff is reportedly considering a run at Chris Dodd’s Connecticut senate seat, having hinted about it last night on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.

Reuters spoke with Schiff’s brother Andrew, a spokesman who told the wire service “We didn’t announce last night and we’re not announcing now … But we’re seeing how Peter fits in with the national Republicans and whether they would actively support a candidate of Peter’s persuasion.”

Schiff — best know for his accurate, but not necessarily profitable, predictions deep economic downturn over the last few years — is apparently traveling to Washington for a sit down with the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Texas Sen. John Cornyn.

(Though there’s already a “Draft Peter Schiff for Senate” site up and running, if you’re interested.

I visited the website Phillips was referring to, and it looks like this could be the real deal…

peter-schiff-for-senate

Source: Schiff2010.com

Source:

“Peter Schiff Considering Senate Run. Really.”
Matt Phillips
Wall Street Journal (MarketBeat Blog), June 10, 2009

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Two Sides To Every (Housing) Story

Some time ago I was interviewed by Tony Sclafani, an MSNBC.com contributor, for a piece he wrote regarding the decline of newspapers. From the article:

Chicago financial research analyst Christopher Hill says he let his newspaper subscription lapse and prefers instead to scour a variety of news sources online. That way, he says, he’s assured of seeing “both sides of the stories.” The 35-year-old, who runs the financial blog Boom2Bust.com, says he’s noticed that his blog’s commenters will call him out when he fails to present a balanced overview of a particular issue.

“There might be a story that focuses on the U.S. housing market and the source might be the National Association of Realtors — and that might be the only side of the story you hear,” Hill says.

Last weekend, I came across an article in the Chicago Tribune which I thought was a pretty good example of what I was referring to in that interview. Nicholas Riccardi wrote on June 7:

Phoenix’s housing bust has turned into a quasi-boom, a sign that its market might have hit bottom and a preview of what a housing recovery could look like.

More homes are selling than at any time since 2006. Prices are slowly stabilizing. Buyers again are in bidding wars — only this time over foreclosed houses selling at deep discounts rather than ranch homes listing for vast sums.

Riccardi’s sources? Individuals who could stand to gain from a rebound in the Phoenix housing market. From the piece:

“The free market is at work,” said Shannon Hubbard, a real estate agent and blogger. “Prices got driven down so much that people said, ‘I’m going to come out and play.’ “

Hubbard writes on BlogArizona.com:

I’m a Realtor-Investor, maintaining an active real estate license with Great American Realty, Inc. I’m also Co-owner of Homewerx Home Inspections, and Owner of BlogArizona.com.

Next, Riccardi quoted a real estate consulting firm. He wrote:

John Burns Real Estate Consulting in February identified Phoenix as “the most unique market in the nation,” where affordability was better than at any time since 1981.

While looking through the consultant’s website, I came across the following in a recent newsletter:

Will tax credits, low mortgage rates, low prices, and continued aggressive government lending turn around the housing market? We HOPE.

Sounds like they can’t wait for a housing turnaround. Here’s another one:

Mike Orr, a Phoenix real estate analyst, thinks the housing market already has hit bottom.

Mr. Orr is not only a real estate analyst, but also an agent, according to the Arizona Republic’s Catherine Reagor in an April 2009 housing-related article.

Finally, there’s the real estate professor. Riccardi wrote:

Arizona State University business professor Karl Gunterman noted the incremental slowing in a report late last month, saying it could be a sign of the market bottoming.

Professor Gunterman, who is also an officer for the American Real Estate Society, talked about the Phoenix real estate market back on October 20, 2008. From the Phoenix Business Journal:

ASU real estate professor Karl Gunterman believes depreciation is beginning to level off, but says prices still are not at rock bottom. He expects the downward trend to continue as August and September are released, but not as steeply.

Was Gunterman correct about his “theory of depreciation?” See for yourself:

phoenix-housing-prices

Phoenix (AZ) Housing Market
Source: ActiveRain.com

I’m not writing this to bash the author of this Tribune article, or his sources. However, as I indicated in that MSNBC interview, I believe readers deserve to be given access to both sides of the story, where applicable. By that, I mean it’s one thing to write a story about the activities of the local gardening club, and it’s another to pen an article about the perceived direction of residential real estate sales and prices. One point of view is not enough for the housing piece.

Unfortunately, this is what readers are left with many times.

By not addressing both sides of the story when warranted, the journalist may be left with nothing more than a press release or sales pitch on behalf of the source(s) used.

So, is there another side to the Phoenix housing story? Well, consider the following from Bloomberg’s Kathleen Howley and Erik Schatzker today:

U.S. home prices may continue to tumble for years, according to economist and Yale University professor Robert J. Shiller.

“Our sense that housing is a wonderful investment is really damaged now,” Shiller said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today…

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller national index of home prices, named after the professor, has fallen 32 percent from a high in the second quarter of 2006.

Shiller is famous for having warned of the housing bust while most other housing “experts” didn’t see it coming. In fact, he was often ridiculed for his comments about an impending housing bubble.

Based on Shiller’s latest outlook, it makes one wonder if we’ve really reached a bottom in housing.

Who knows? But having access to both sides of the story sure is nice.

Source:

“Bidding wars are back — at low end”
Nicholas Riccardi
Chicago Tribune, June 7, 2009

“Housing price declines head for record territory”
Jan Bucholz
Phoenix Business Journal, October 20, 2008

“Shiller Says U.S. Home Prices May Decline for Years (Update1)”
Kathleen M. Howley, Erik Schatzker
Bloomberg, June 9, 2009


RealtyTrac

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Quote For The Week

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From Gerald Celente, trend strategist and founder of the Trends Research Institute, on the Financial Sense Newshour this past weekend:

They’re setting us up for a great collapse. It’s going to happen. By dumping all this money into the system, it’s going to look like these so-called “green shoots” of prosperity will be sprouting forth. But they’ll never flower. Of course it’s going to look like a recovery. You know, the trillions of dollar that they’re dumping out there is going to have a little bit of, you know, this money manure is going to fertilize something. But again, it’s only temporary. It’s like giving someone a drug to cure a chronic degenerative disease. The drugs don’t cure those diseases, they only give you symptom relief, and that’s what we’re going to have now. People better prepare for the worst, because the worst is yet to come

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Advice For The Hotshot Fund Manager

Investor, commentator, and author Jim Rogers was recently interviewed by staff of the Economic Times (India) website. One statement from the former partner of George Soros stood out in particular:

What will you tell a confused fund manager who seeks your advice?

Become a farmer. The world has tens of thousands of hotshot fund managers right now. If I am correct, the financial community is not going to be a great place to be in for the next 30 years. We have many periods in history when financial people were in charge, we had many periods when people who produced real goods were in charge — miners, farmers, etc.

The world, in my view, is changing and is shifting away from the financial types to producers of real goods, and this is going to last for several decades as it always has. This may sound strange but it always happens this way.

Ten years from now, it may be farmers who will drive the Lamborghinis and the stock brokers will drive tractors or taxis at best.

taxi-driver

Source:

“Fund Managers can become farmers: Jim Rogers”
Economic Times (India), June 3, 2009

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Quotes For The Week

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“I am a citizen.”

-John Hamilton, at his Sandusky (Ohio) Municipal Court arraignment last Thursday after being arrested by the Sandusky Police Department for refusing to stop mowing overgrown grass at a public park (for which the city has limited funds to maintain).

“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation.”

-Legendary money manager Marc Faber, during an interview with Bloomberg Television last Wednesday.

“I don’t know why they got Bernie Madoff in jail… They ought to make him secretary of the Treasury.”

-Peter Schiff, President of Euro Pacific Capital and author of the upcoming book Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, at the Ira W. Sohn Investment Research Conference in New York City last week.

“We are all grieving over the loss of ‘upward only’ lifestyles and the David Copperfield-style disappearing act of our net worths and savings. Even more frustrating is that we all feel that it was not ‘our’ screw up. We were lured into a false sense of security and aspirations of wealth accumulation by the cosmos. It just happened!!! We were all hit by a pandemic economic plague, not by sniper fire, so we are left without a rationale, reason or an understandable cause. We search the airwaves and the internet for solace and comfort. Why did it happen? Who is to blame? Is there a magic wand that might bring us back to life? We have an unquenchable thirst for information to help answer these questions. However, the ability to cheer up and get on with life does not rest in the plethora of governmental programs enacted to ease our economic pain, or in the well-intentioned commentary of pundits on the history and future of financial engineering and statistics. The solution rests in first, immediately adapting and surviving so that we are around in order to, secondly, understand what information is important and how that information is harvested.

The first objective is most easily achieved by understanding the Kubler-Ross book On Death and Dying, which outlines 5 stages of grieving:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

I will save you 200 pages of reading by concluding that recovery is the amount of time required to go from Stage 1, denial, to Stage 5, acceptance. What we have learned after 30 years of investing and cyclical roller coasters is bypass 2 to 4 and go immediately to 5. In short: Get over it and get on with it!”

-Legendary real estate investor Tom Barrack, in his latest “Chairman’s Corner” column on the Colony Capital website.

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Silence Of The Doomsayers

As I don’t watch too much programming on the financial news networks these days (handcuffed to this computer chair, you know), I can’t say if the following is true. From Joe Weisenthal on the Business Insider website today:

Doomsayers make for good TV, but does the media have something against the real apocalyptic uber-bears?

The Daily Crux notes that you hardly ever see Jim Rogers on TV these days, and suspects that it’s because the networks aren’t keen on airing his anti-Washington views at a time when all business wants to be friendly with government.

That echoes something Time Magazine’s Justin Fox recently wrote about hardcore libertarian money manager Peter Schiff:

This year, though, Schiff’s TV bookings are down 75% to 85%, says his younger brother Andrew, who handles p.r. for him. About the only things written about him lately have been negative–the result of financial blogger Michael (Mish) Shedlock’s pointing out that Schiff’s investment recommendations were money losers in 2008. How could a bear have managed to lose money last year? Schiff was blindsided when global investors piled into dollars and U.S. government bonds during last fall’s panic. But that rush to safety has already abated, and over longer periods, Schiff’s decade-old strategy of steering clients out of U.S. securities and into commodities and overseas stocks has been a big winner. His investment record surely can’t be the reason for his fall from media grace.

No, the main issue with Schiff seems to be that he hasn’t changed his tune–and it isn’t a pleasant tune to listen to. He thinks the “phony economy” of the U.S. is headed for even harder times. He believes that the crisis-fighting measures coming out of Washington are merely delaying the inevitable, debasing the dollar and loading future taxpayers with huge debts.

It does seem as though we’re hearing less from Schiff, though on CNBC they do frequently have that other, British guy from EuroPacific, who is just as apocalyptic.

That being said, there’s not as much Roubini, Meredith Whitney or Nassim Taleb on TV either. None of them (particularly Roubini) is all that objectionable. It’s just that with the stock market rally, the pullback from the edge of the cliff and, perhaps, crisis fatigue, they’re not in vogue like they once were.

Until we take a real steep ride down again, we can’t test the theory that they’re being shunned.

I have an awful feeling we might get that opportunity soon enough.

Source:

“Is The Media Shunning Jim Rogers And Peter Schiff?”
Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider, May 29, 2009

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Top Buffett Aide Disputes Green Shoots In Housing, Economy

Contrary to what is being uttered in Washington and on Wall Street these days, a top aide of legendary investor Warren Buffett told an audience gathered at a New York City investment conference yesterday that Buffett’s gang doesn’t see any signs of a near-term recovery in the U.S. housing market and economy. Bloomberg’s Michael McKee wrote Thursday:

The U.S. housing market is nowhere near recovery and signs of stabilization are premature, said David Sokol, a top aide to billionaire investor Warren Buffett who oversees the nation’s second-largest real estate brokerage.

Sokol was among money managers who told an investment conference in New York the economy is still deteriorating and they don’t have a lot of confidence in President Barack Obama’s economic policies.

“We’re not seeing the green shoots,” said Sokol, head of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., which owns HomeServices of America Inc. “We don’t see improvement.”

MidAmerican is owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and Sokol is considered a possible successor to Buffett as head of Berkshire. Sokol spoke before reports today showed new-home sales posted their second increase in three months during April, and mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures rose to records in the first quarter.

Homes in the process of foreclosure are creating a “shadow backlog” of unsold properties that will continue to hang over the market, Sokol, 52, said in a speech yesterday at the Ira W. Sohn Investment Research Conference in New York. While official statistics show a 10- to 12-month supply of unsold homes, “we believe the backlog of homes for sale is twice that.”

Many people who want or need to sell their homes haven’t put them on the market yet because the outlook for sales has been poor, he said. “It will be mid-2011 before we see the market in balance,” with no more than a six-month backlog, he said.

The National Association of Realtors reported yesterday that the number of previously owned houses on the market in April climbed 8.8 percent to 3.97 million, a 10.2 months’ supply.

Sokol suggested government efforts to ease the crisis are actually drawing out the recovery. “We really need to let the economics work through the system,” he said.

It is still difficult and costly for businesses to borrow, Sokol said, creating “headwinds” for recovery. He predicted the U.S. unemployment rate would rise above 10 percent from April’s 8.9 percent.

dead-plant

Green shoots?

Source:

“Buffett Aide Sokol Says Housing, Economy Aren’t Near Recovery”
Michael McKee
Bloomberg, May 29, 2009

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