The Great Recession Blog

Since this is a long article packed with my predictions (and some near-predictions, so let’s say “high likelihoods”), you will probably want to read it in sections, which you’ll find cover my ongoing predictions about the following topics: To make it easier to get back to where you left off, I’ve made these targeted links […]

The twaddle that comes out of the White House is deep right now. When our tottering president isn’t out enjoying a bike ride and falling down because Putin put gum in his stirrup so that he couldn’t get his foot out to steady himself, he is assembling a colorful team of Frisco-style professionals highly qualified […]

In a world embroiled in what could turn into World War III in which Russian President Vladimir Putin is repeatedly threatening nuclear missile attacks, a return to talking about the collapse of the Everything Bubble, especially the housing part of this collapse, seems mundane.

Interestingly, you’re about to find out that the fall in housing prices and home sales may power us further into high inflation for longer. We are entering a situation that could turn into a true oxymoron where lower prices equal higher prices as early as this week at the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting. […]

Several signs have appeared in the past few weeks that indicate buyers are suffering from fatigue and may have gone about as high as they are willing or able to go. While housing prices have shot up for months, wages have stagnated. Government stimulus checks have offset that, but you cannot really make a long-term […]

Is the inflation I’ve been writing about really all just transitory as Papa Powell claims it is? The Fed Head assures us he has this under control. Would that be just like Father Fed and friends had bank reserves under control right before the repo crisis blew up in late 2019? Or just like they […]

Things couldn’t be worse if you’re in the market for a house, except that they can be and probably will be. As it stands, you can probably buy this photographed “cosmetic” fixer for half a million if it’s in a modest neighborhood or a large city that everyone is fleeing. Housing prices rocketed to the […]

Every couple of months, I bring us up to date on how the economy has changed, and the last couple of month have taken us predictably back into economic decline, following a summer burst of subnormal passableness that never got us out of the crater we fell into last spring.

I mentioned in a recent article that the weird thing about this recession is that it is the only one in which personal income has gone up during a recession. That, of course, is because of government assistance, which is making it so we don’t have to feel the pain of a recession that the […]

A journey in photos and facts to compare the present Great Recession with the past Great Depression to gain perspective on where we might be headed.

The graph here shows the point at which I said early last summer housing sales had turned over (for the worst) and would remain on a downtrend indefinitely, and it shows how that prediction has panned out. Existing home sales were down again nationally (4.4%) in April (fourteenth month in a row of declining sales […]

Two of my biggest and longest-term predictions for 2018 and 2019 proved resoundingly true this week, and my sole prediction for this year — a prediction of recession bolder than anyone else’s — moved a big step closer to coming true. Prediction #1: The Fed will prove to have no exit plan from its recovery […]