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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (18857)	3/23/2004 7:28:54 PM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. homeowners have amassed a record $6.82 trillion of mortgage debt as real estate values jumped in the past decade, and have borrowed against their homes for spending money. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the nation's guardian of financial stability, is supporting them. ``We know that increases in home values and the borrowing against home equity likely helped cushion the effects of a declining stock market during 2001 and 2002,'' Greenspan said in a Feb. 23 speech in Washington. Some economists including Yale University's Robert Shiller say they disagree with the Fed chairman, arguing that consumers shouldn't use home values to supplement spending when their hourly wages are rising at the slowest pace on record and the savings rate is a third of the last decade's average. As borrowing costs rise, mortgage payments may jump for households with adjustable-rate loans, causing delinquencies, Shiller says. Full story: quote.bloomberg.com Templeton, Buffet, Schiller, Roach, lots of others are even more pessimistic than I am about this credit bubble. I don't think we have been hearing nearly enough about the debt situation; it is hardly being taken seriously in the popular press. Everyone just plunges optimistically ahead. Sorry, I refuse to be a lemming. I have no debt.