Money and Politics

“At some point, if the U.S. does not address proactively its deficit outlook and its debt outlook, there will be a financial-market revolt,”..

via Deficit, Budget Woes Need Solutions as U.S. Nears the Precipice – WSJ.com.

BACK IN 2004, MOVEON MADE A POLITICAL SPOT about how Bush was saddling our kids with too much debt. The folks at RedState have updated it for 2009. Best political parody of the season.

Posted at 2:52 pm by Glenn Reynolds

Instapundit

The recession cut home values by $2.4 trillion last year, First American CoreLogic said.

An additional 2.2 million borrowers will be underwater if home prices decline another 5 percent, First American, a Santa Ana, California-based seller of mortgage and economic data, said in a report today. Households with negative equity or near it account for a quarter of all mortgage holders.

“We have way too much supply and not enough demand,” Sam Khater, senior economist for First American, said in an interview. “People aren’t going to purchase a home as long as prices keep falling, and someone who is worried about their job isn’t going to purchase a home either.”

Prices in 20 U.S. cities fell 18.5 percent in December from a year earlier, the fastest drop on record, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Sales of previously owned homes, which account for about 90 percent of the market, fell in January to the lowest since 1997, and new-home purchases plunged to the lowest since records began in 1963, the National Association of Realtors and Commerce Department said.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide