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Teachers Now Getting The Pink Slips

The myth of the recession-proof job continues to be exposed. Police officers, firefighters— now teachers.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Alex Frangos today:

In a sign of how severe the employment downturn is getting, even schoolteachers, an occupation once viewed as recession proof, are feeling the pain.

Education jobs grew steadily in recent years amid rising enrollment and government efforts to reduce class sizes. Now the increase in teaching positions has leveled off as school districts struggle with budget pressures. The demographic bulge caused by children of baby boomers — the so-called echo boom — has also begun to wane.

Los Angeles Unified School District laid off 2,500 teachers this spring. Broward County, Fla., Ms. Frommer’s district, cut 400 school jobs. Rochester, N.Y., laid off 300 teachers.

Other districts have avoided cuts by negotiating pay reductions and enacting furloughs and hiring freezes. In June, education jobs actually ticked up 0.5% nationally to just under 3.1 million on a seasonally adjusted basis. But the number of education-related jobs has declined in six of the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That contrasts with annual growth of about 3% over the past 15 years in the education field. In the past year, education jobs have grown at about half that rate. Most in demand are teachers in math, science and special education. College instructors have also been in high demand.

Many of the layoffs came in June as teachers prepared to say goodbye to their students for summer. Union and state rules require schools to give teachers notice before the end of the school year if their jobs won’t be there in the fall.

Frangos added that younger instructors have been the ones getting most of the pink slips:

Because contracts often require that those with the least seniority be laid off first, the brunt of lost jobs has been borne by younger teachers.

Think the news of school layoffs are deterring young adults from trying to enter the teaching field? Think again. Frangos noted:

Despite headlines about teacher layoffs, more young people are going back to school to obtain their teaching certificates.

I wish aspiring teachers the best of luck, as it sounds like they’ll need it.

Source:

“Even ‘Recession Proof’ Schoolteachers Feel Pinch of Employment Downturn”
Alex Frangos
Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009

U.S. Housing Price Forecast: Double-Digit Percentage Decline Still Ahead

“Housing rebound still fragile; St. Louis sales down 16% from May ‘08”

-St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 23, 2009

“Option ARMs reset threatens housing rebound”

-Seattle Times, June 27, 2009

“Housing rebound continues, barely”

CNN Money.com, July 1, 2009

From headlines like these, I apparently slept through the U.S. housing bottom. Then again, maybe not. From Reuters today:

U.S. housing prices will fall by a double-digit percentage from already beaten-down levels, resulting in an overall 40 percent plunge by the time foreclosures peak in the second half of 2010, Barclays Capital economist Michelle Meyer said.

Meyer issued her forecast two days after the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes showed for April an 18.1 percent year-to-year decline, compared with 18.7 percent in March, in the rate of home price declines in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas.

The indexes have tracked the prices of U.S. single-family homes since 1987.

“While the early signs of improvement are in place for housing, the market will likely remain out of balance for some time, given the flood of foreclosures,” Meyer wrote.

“Home prices are likely to continue to fall, albeit at a slowing pace, even after the economy technically emerges from the recession.” Home prices have fallen 32.6 percent from their peak three years ago, S&P/Case-Shiller said.

On that basis, they would need to fall another 11 percent for an overall 40 percent peak-to-trough decline. Further declines could imperil metropolitan areas that have yet to experience the worst of the nation’s housing slump.

According to S&P/Case-Shiller, New York was the only major market to have above-average, month-over-month housing price declines in both March and April and also have a below-average decline for the year ended in April.

Home prices in that market fell 12.5 percent from a year earlier. The Denver area had the smallest drop, 4.9 percent.

Bloomberg’s Oshrat Carmiel talked more about the Manhattan residential real estate market today. Carmiel wrote:

Manhattan apartment prices dropped for the first time since 2002 in the second quarter as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. caught up to property owners in the nation’s most expensive urban market.

The median price fell 18.5 percent from a year earlier to $835,700, New York appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said today. The number of sales plunged by half, the most since Miller Samuel began keeping data in 1989.

“The standstill that existed after Lehman Brothers has been broken, and it was the sellers that cried uncle,” Pamela Liebman, chief executive officer of New York-based property broker the Corcoran Group, said in an interview.

Values are falling broadly in Manhattan for the first time in the almost four-year U.S. housing recession, with declines now seen in co-operatives and condominiums of every size and price. Private-sector employment in the city dropped by 91,200 jobs, or 2.8 percent, in the 12 months through May as Wall Street losses and asset writedowns topped $1.4 trillion.

The price of studio apartments declined 16 percent from a year ago to a median of $405,000, according to Miller Samuel. One-bedrooms dropped 17 percent to $650,000 and two-bedrooms fell 23 percent to $1.27 million. Three-bedroom units fell 37 percent to $2.35 million and four-bedrooms plummeted 47 percent to a median of $3.92 million.

Wake me when the housing bottom arrives, please.

Sources:

“US Home Prices Seen Falling 40% Overall: Analyst”
Reuters, July 2, 2009

“Manhattan Apartment Prices Drop as Lehman Hits Home (Update1)”
Oshrat Carmiel
Bloomberg, July 2, 2009

Luck Be A Lady In This Labor Market?

Back on May 22, I wrote the following:

America’s labor force has been hit hard by this recession. Especially the guys. From Reuters’ Ed Stoddard earlier in the week:

One statistic that stands out in America’s recession-stung economy is the unemployment rate for adult men: in April for the second month in a row it surged ahead of the national average to 9.4 percent versus 8.9 percent for all workers. The jobless rate for adult women was 7.1 percent.

The latest numbers don’t show much improvement in the unemployment rate gap between men and women. From MarketWatch’s Andrea Coombes today:

The current recession is hitting workers in just about every industry, but men are taking a much bigger hit than women.

The 2.3 percentage-point gap between men’s June unemployment rate of 10.6% and women’s 8.3% rate is near the highest it’s ever been since records started being kept in 1948. The gap first hit 2 percentage points in March this year and the 2.5 percentage-point gap in May was the highest ever.

The overall unemployment rate rose to 9.5% in June, from 9.4% in May. The economy lost a higher-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June.

“The gap between female and male unemployment has never been as large as it is now,” said Sophia Koropeckyj, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com.

It’s not hard to see why. Two male-dominated industries — construction and manufacturing — account for about half of the some 6 million jobs lost since the recession started in December 2007 and both industries started shedding jobs before that.

“Every industry is contracting, but these industries have taken the brunt,” Koropeckyj said. Given that men account for 87% of workers in manufacturing and 71% in construction, it’s not surprising that men’s unemployment rate is rocketing past women’s rate.

The only two private-sector industries to show a net increase in jobs from the start of the recession through May are health care and education — and women workers are highly concentrated in both.

Health care logged a net gain of about 542,000 jobs from December 2007 through May, and private education showed a net gain of about 102,000 jobs in that period.

Eighty-one percent of health-care workers are women, and 61% of workers in private education are women, Koropeckyj said. Also, government has shown a net job gain of 259,000 in that period, and 57% of government workers are women.

Frank Sinatra, “Luck Be A Lady” (1966)
YouTube Video Link

Source:

“Recession hits men harder”
Andrea Coombes
MarketWatch, July 2, 2009

Broader Measure Of Unemployment Hits 16.5% In June

Earlier today, the Labor Department announced the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.5%, a 26-year high. Nonfarm payrolls shrank by 467,000. Could America’s labor woes possibly be any worse?

You bet.

This morning, Phil Izzo of the Wall Street Journal’s “Real Time Economics” blog wrote:

As job losses accelerated in June, the unemployment rate ticked up 0.1 percentage point to 9.5%, the highest level since August 1983.

But another more comprehensive gauge of unemployment also continued to tick up. The government’s broader measure, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification, hit 16.5% in June, 0.1 percentage point higher than March.

The comprehensive measure of labor underutilization accounts for people who have stopped looking for work or who can’t find full-time jobs. The index had posted a 0.6 percentage point jump in May. The pace of increase has begun to mirror the rise in the headline rate after soaring at higher pace earlier this year, possibly signaling that more workers are starting to look for jobs again.

Though the pace may be moderating, the figure still is the highest since the Labor Department started this particular data series in 1994. It’s also above a discontinued and even broader measure that hit 15% in late 1982, when the official unemployment rate was 10.8%. (That data series goes back to the 1970s.)

Painting an even bleaker picture, Izzo added:

Many forecasters expect the official unemployment rate to top 10% by the end of this year. The two indexes have begun to move closer in tandem as improving sentiment amid widespread talk of “green shoots” of recovery were bringing job seekers back to the market. However, this month that trend appears to be reversing as the participation rate declined.

Meanwhile, the number of long-term unemployed continues to rise, with 4,381,000 out of work for over 27 weeks, up from 3,948,000 last month. If those job seekers continue to be discouraged and stop looking for work they won’t be counted in the headline unemployment number. However, the broader jobless rate would move higher, and could easily top 18%. For people in this group, comparisons to the Great Depression (when 25% of Americans were out of work) may not look so wild even if overall economic activity is holding up better.

Source:

“Broader Unemployment Rate Hit 16.5% in June”
Phil Izzo
Wall Street Journal (Real Time Economics Blog), July 2, 2009

Signs Of The Time, Part 49

One of the bigger fallacies I’ve heard over the years, when it comes to job “security,” has been that first responders, meaning sworn police officers and firefighters, are never laid off.

Mind you, I don’t want them to go anywhere else. However, the fact is, their ranks are being trimmed by the new economic reality.

Back in 2005, I was working in the back office of some fire department in the Chicago suburbs when one of the fire officers passed along an article he thought I might be interested in reading. It was about how municipalities might soon be using private fire departments and their personnel instead of public sector employees. Already well aware this was no longer just a possibility but a reality by then, I asked the fire prevention bureau secretary what she thought of such talk. She looked me square and the eye and adamantly declared that it will never happen. Period.

I wonder if the fact that her husband was a firefighter with another suburb had anything to do with her position on this matter.

Anyway, the sad fact is, first responders, like any other profession, can and will be given pink slips when times are tough and the money is drying up.

If you have any doubts, Google “firefighters laid off” and “police laid off” and read the results.

With your FREE My Monster Account, you can: Set up job search agents and have your dream job emailed to you!

Anyway, here’s just one more example demonstrating how bad the situation is getting. Reuters’ Scott Malone wrote yesterday:

The oldest U.S. mounted police unit is going the way of the Pony Express, brought down by a tough economy and a budget crisis in Boston.

The unit’s 10 officers on horseback are a common sight at major Boston parks and historic sites, frequently photographed by tourists and deployed primarily for crowd control.

But after 150 years, police officials said they need to eliminate the mounted unit, a move city officials estimate will save some $700,000 for a city budget that has been strained by a 19-month long U.S. recession that has hammered tax revenue.

The 10 officers and their supervisor will be reassigned within the department, Police Commissioner Edward Davis said in a note to staff, while the 10 civilian staffers who cared for the animals will be laid off.

Source:

“Oldest U.S. mounted police unit gets budget axe”
Scott Malone
Reuters, June 29, 2009

Forecast: New York City Housing Prices To Plummet

If you live in the Big Apple, you might have heard about the latest Deutsche Bank forecast on housing prices for your area. And you’re probably hoping they’re wrong. Very wrong. From the Wall Street Journal website this past Tuesday:

How much further could home prices tumble in the New York City metro area? Deutsche Bank predicts a decline of 40.6% from the first quarter of 2009.

That’s a slight improvement over the 47.4% decline that the bank’s analysts had forecast in March, and it reflects in part the fact that prices have dropped since then. Still, prices would have to drop another 32% from the first quarter of 2009 to return the New York market to levels of affordability not seen since 1998.

Affordability measures whether a household at the median family income could purchase a home given median prices and at prevailing interest rates. (Deutsche Bank assumes a 5% mortgage rate, which means that prices could have to fall further if interest rates don’t return to the 5% level that they reached earlier this year.)

Already, affordability in some 74 of the top 100 U.S. housing markets have already returned to their historic highs.

Median prices in the first quarter of 2009 dropped to $446,000 in New York, down 19% from the peak of $552,000 set in the second quarter of 2007. Deutsche Bank forecasts a total peak-to-trough decline of 52.1%.

Some of the top California housing markets are now undervalued based strictly on affordability. But rising job loss and price-cutting foreclosure sales could lead to another 11% price decline in Los Angeles and a 14% decline for Riverside, Calif. San Diego appears closest to the bottom, with just another 8.7% decline before reaching bottom.

Bloomberg’s Brian Louis also picked up on the Deutsche Bank forecast, and added:

U.S. home prices may fall another 14 percent, led by the New York and Orange County, California, metropolitan areas, before reaching a bottom as an increase in unemployment offsets lower prices, Deutsche Bank AG said.

“Affordability is no longer the driving issue in the housing market, and we believe prices still have a ways to fall in many areas before home prices reach their trough,” Deutsche Bank analysts led by Karen Weaver, wrote in a report yesterday. “The bottom is getting closer, but we are not there yet.”

Home prices are forecast to fall 41.7 percent from their peak, Weaver said. That’s higher than a forecast she released in March and reflects “the actual declines to date and the expected future impact on home prices from rising foreclosure inventory and unemployment.”

Suzanne!!!

“Suzanne Researched This”
YouTube Video Link

Sources:

“Deutsche Bank Predicts 40% Drop in New York Home Prices”
Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2009

“U.S. Home Prices to Fall 14% More, Deutsche Says (Update1)”
Brian Louis
Bloomberg, June 16, 2009

U.S. Postal Service Hit Hard By Recession, Technology

Times are tough for our nation’s mail service. From MarketWatch this morning:

The U.S. Postal Service, having posted a nearly $2 billion fiscal second-quarter loss, is contemplating cutting tens of thousands more jobs and closing or consolidating 3,100, or 8.4%, of its 36,700 offices and retail outlets, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Postal Service also is considering eliminating Saturday deliveries, the Journal reported, as mail volume for the quarter ended March 31 shrank 15% from a year earlier.

First-class-mail volume has been cut because people and businesses increasingly pay bills and correspond via the Internet. In addition, the weaker economy has prompted businesses to send fewer catalogs and direct-marketing mailings, the Journal reported.

“Mailbox prank gone horribly wrong”
YouTube Video Link

Source:

“Postal service, operating in the red, mulls more cuts: Journal”
MarketWatch, June 15, 2009

Mayors: Give Us, Not The States, More Money

Speaking of bailouts… from Reuters’ Camille Drummond this morning:

Without more direct aid to U.S. local governments, Washington may make matters worse for cities facing falling tax revenues and increased spending needs, the nation’s mayors said at their annual meeting this weekend.

Mayors said they bear the tough task of cutting services and jobs vital to U.S. cities, even with help from the $787 billion in stimulus funds Congress passed in February…

Local governments, struggling to issue debt in a largely stalled municipal bond market, expressed worries that current federal stimulus initiatives — including development grants, infrastructure funding, and the subsidized Recovery Zone and Build America Bonds — while helpful, may not be enough in the financial crisis.

“And it’s important that metropolitan areas get money directly for recovery, and not through the states,” said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has voiced concerns that states may use stimulus funds to close their own budget deficits, especially in California with its massive $24.3 billion gap.

“Take your stinking paws off our money,
you damn dirty states!”

Source:

“Mayors say cities need direct economic help”
Camille Drummond
Reuters, June 15, 2009

U.S. Budget Deficit Closing In On $1 Trillion

“You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.”

-Abraham Lincoln (16th U.S. President. 1809-1865)

More bad news concerning the nation’s finances. From the Associated Press’ Martin Crutsinger today:

The federal budget deficit soared to a record for May of $189.7 billion, pushing the tide of red ink close to $1 trillion with four months left in the budget year.

The rising deficit reflects increased government spending due to the recession, and billions of dollars spent on bailouts for banks and other troubled companies.

The Treasury Department reported Wednesday that the red ink so far this year totals $991.9 billion. The administration is projecting the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1, will total an all-time record of $1.84 trillion. That would be more than four times the amount of last year’s record deficit…

The new Treasury report showed government spending totals a record $2.37 trillion through the first eight months of the budget year, 18 percent more than the year-ago period.

At the same time, the economic downturn has cut into tax revenues. The report showed that government receipts total $1.67 trillion through the May, down 18 percent from last year. Rising unemployment and struggling businesses have meant a drop in both income and corporate taxes…

The $991.9 billion deficit so far this budget year is more than triple the amount of red ink incurred during the year-ago period.

Source:

“Budget deficit hits record for May of $189.7B”
Martin Crutsinger
Associated Press, June 10, 2009

U.S. Labor Market In Worse Shape Than Thought?

Labor market conditions in the United States are a lot worse than what is being portrayed, according to the Associated Press’ Frank Bass. He wrote today:

Consider the numbers:

_The 8.9 percent April unemployment rate was based on 13.7 million Americans out of work. But that number doesn’t include discouraged workers, or people who gave up looking for work after four weeks. Add those 700,000 people, and the unemployment rate would be 9.3 percent.

_The official rate also doesn’t include “marginally-attached workers,” or people who have looked for work in the past year but stopped searching in the past month because of barriers to employment such as child care, poor health or lack of transportation. Add those 1.4 million people, and the unemployment rate would be 10.1 percent.

_The official rate also doesn’t include “involuntary part-time workers,” or the 2 million people… who took a part-time job because that’s all they could get, plus those whose work hours dropped below the full-time level. Once those 9 million workers are added to the unemployment mix, the rate would be 15.8 percent.

All told, nearly 25 million Americans were either unemployed, underemployed, or had given up looking for a job in April.

The ranks of involuntary part-timers has increased by 4.9 million in the past year, according to a May study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Many economists now predict unemployment won’t peak until 2010. And since employers generally increase the hours of existing workers before hiring new ones, workers could be looking for full-time jobs for some time.

According to some, the “official” unemployment rate is useless in that it is a “massaged” number. From my post on September 22:

Back on June 9 Elizabeth MacDonald of FOX Business talked about a new book by Kevin Phillips, a political and economic commentator for more than three decades and onetime Nixon strategist…

Some would say this was done purposely. Under the Clintons, Phillips says, the nation’s employment figures were massaged and kneaded too.

In 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the work force to include only that small percentage of what it called “discouraged workers” who had been seeking work for less than a year, Phillips says.

The longer-term “discouraged”-some 4m U.S. adults who simply are not working-fell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the “hidden unemployed.”

The Clinton administration also dropped the number of households sampled for the data, from 60,000 to 50,000, making the number more rickety.

But a disproportionate number of the dropped households were in the inner cities. So, along with a new adjustment formula that is believed to also have cut black unemployment estimates, poverty figures get to look a lot less worse, Phillips says.

Slick Willie strikes again?

The unemployment numbers for May are scheduled to be released tomorrow at 8:30 AM (EDT).

Source:

“Part-timers form a hidden unemployment rate”
Frank Bass
Associated Press, June 4, 2009

1 In 9 Americans Now On Food Stamps

The number of Americans turning to food stamps keeps on rising. From Reuters’ Charles Abbott earlier today:

One in nine Americans are using federal food stamps to help buy groceries as the country’s deep recession forced another 591,000 people onto the federal anti-hunger program at latest count.

Enrollment jumped 2 percent to 33.2 million people in March, the fourth consecutive month that rolls hit a record, said the Agriculture Department. The average monthly benefit was $113.87 per person.

“It’s tough out there for struggling families and will be for many months to come,” Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, said.

“It’s very likely that the numbers will continue to grow in the coming months as a turnaround in unemployment and wage declines typically lags behind the recovery of the broader economy,” he said.

In 20 states, as many as one in eight are on the food stamp program, according to the Food Research Center.

A 2004 Cornell University study found that at least half of all Americans between the ages of 20 and 65 resort to using food stamps at least once during their adult lives. The study, published in the December 2004 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, also found links with race and education. More than 85% of African Americans will use food stamps some time between the ages of 20 and 65, compared with 37% of white Americans, while about 64% of adults with less than 12 years of education will use food stamps, compared with 38% of adults with 12 or more years of education.

Sources:

“One in nine Americans on food stamps, USDA says”
Charles Abbott
Reuters, June 3, 2009

“Half of all Americans will use food stamps during adulthood, Cornell researcher’s study finds”
Cornell News, August 24, 2004

It’s A Mad World After All

On Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released their crime statistics for all of 2008. And, I, for one, am surprised at what the data revealed. From the Associated Press:

Cities in the United States got safer in 2008, while small towns grew more dangerous, according to FBI data released Monday.

The FBI says violent crime nationwide dropped by 2.5% last year. Property crimes also fell by 1.6%, according to the preliminary data collected by the FBI.

Cities with more than 1 million people saw murders fall by 4.3%; cities with 500,000 to 1 million people saw murders fall by nearly 8%, according to the FBI.

Yet in towns with fewer than 10,000 residents, murders rose 5.5%, rape increased 1.4%, and robbery 3.9%, the agency reported.

The latest data show violent crime fell for a second straight year, after increases in 2006 and 2005…

Nationwide, murder and manslaughter dropped 4.4% in 2008.
Aggravated assault declined 3.2%, forcible rape decreased 2.2%, and robbery dropped 1.1%, according to the FBI. The country also saw a huge drop in car thefts — more than 13%.

The western region of the country saw the biggest declines, with a 4.2% drop in property crime and a 3.4% drop in violent crime. The Northeast saw a slight increase in property crime, which rose by 1.6%.

Also just released were the results from an annual study of global violence. In comparison to the U.S. crime numbers, there wasn’t much of a surprise here. From Reuters’ Peter Griffiths yesterday:

The economic downturn has made the world more violent and unstable in the last year, according to a study Tuesday that ranked New Zealand as the most peaceful country and Iraq the least.

The impact of high food and fuel prices in early 2008 and the deepening recession later in the year eroded peace, according to the Global Peace Index, compiled by a unit of The Economist magazine group.

Economic weakening has increased political instability, demonstrations and crime in some countries, according to the study, which is online at www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/home.php.

“Rapidly rising unemployment, pay freezes and falls in the value of house prices, savings and pensions is causing popular resentment in many countries, with political repercussions,” the report says.

Iceland, the most peaceful nation last year, fell to fourth place after violent protests over its economic meltdown.

“There is a very, very strong correlation between peace and wealth,” Steve Killelea, founder of the Global Peace Index, told Reuters. “Peace is a leading indicator on economic prosperity.”

New Zealand replaced Iceland at the head of the table of 144 countries. The top 10 included all the main Scandinavian nations as well as Austria in fifth place, Japan seventh and Canada eighth…

The United States rose six places to 83rd, wedged between Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan…

Sources:

“FBI: U.S. crime falls, but small town violence up”
Associated Press, June 1, 2009

“Global recession making world more violent: study”
Peter Griffiths
Reuters, June 2, 2009

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.

Green shoots?

Source:

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

Boom2Bust Turns Two Years Old

Memorial Day Weekend 2007. Sure seems like yesterday….

Friday, May 25, 2007.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed out the week at 13,507.28. The S&P 500 index finished up at 1,515.73.

The median house price is $222,700, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Family net worth is at an all-time high of $64.36 trillion for the quarter.

The number of unemployed persons is 6.8 million and the unemployment rate is 4.5 percent.

Total public debt outstanding in the United States is $8.8 trillion.

Talk of the “Goldilocks economy” rules the day, and Washington and Wall Street are in “don’t worry, be happy” mode.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t believe the nation will slip into a recession, and he rejects the notion raised by his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, that the economy’s expansion could be in danger of fizzling out…

The Fed chief testified on Capitol Hill amid growing concerns that problems with risky mortgages and a painful housing slump could send the economy into a tailspin. Greenspan recently said there’s a one-in-three possibility of a recession this year.

But Bernanke — while acknowledging there are risks — told Congress’s Joint Economic Committee that the Fed does not see such negative forces pushing the economy into a recession.

“I would make a point, I think, which is important, which is there seems to be a sense that expansions die of old age, that after they reach a certain point, then they naturally begin to end,” Bernanke said. “I don’t think the evidence really supports that. If we look at history, we see that the periods of expansions have varied considerably. Some have been quite long.”

-Associated Press, March 29, 2007

…a new SUV in every McMansion’s garage

Fast forward to today…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 8,473.49. The S&P 500 index finished up at 910.33.

The median house price in the first quarter of 2009 is now $169,000, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Banks and businesses worldwide have lost $1.47 trillion in write-downs and credit losses in the past 22 months stemming from the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market.

Household net worth dropped a record 9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, pushing total net worth down to $51.48 trillion. It was the sixth straight quarterly decline from the peak of $64.4 trillion in the second quarter of 2007. Also, the drop in net worth in the fourth quarter of 2008 was the largest drop in dollar terms on record, going back to 1951, when the U.S. government began keeping quarterly records. The 9 percent drop was also the largest drop as a percentage change on record.

In April (the last month data is available for), the number of unemployed Americans reached 13.7 million persons and the unemployment rate was 8.9 percent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5.7 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007.

The total public debt outstanding in the United States is now $11.3 trillion. Furthermore, as Bloomberg’s Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry pointed out on March 31:

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

Goldilocks made a fine meal for the bears.

But I’m convinced our fuzzy friends still want more.

Thank you all for reading and contributing comments to Boom2Bust.com, and for inspiring me to post about some of the financial research I come across on a daily basis.

Personally, I think that while we may get out of this recession soon enough, I fear all the additional obligations accrued since 2007 will only have made the house of cards that is the U.S. financial system weaker, thereby setting ourselves up for more pain when the eventual crash comes.

You can only kick the can down the road for so long before you have to call it a day.

Year three, here we come!

Christopher E. Hill
Editor