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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: regli who wrote (59340)	11/11/2006 9:41:21 PM
From: bart13	Respond to of 116555

I added to my chart the outlay side. What is striking is that both parties increase spending at very similar speed. However, what the debt chart makes obvious is that the Republicans, at least over the past forty plus years, ignored a significant ingredient of responsible management: The difference is, as you surmised, that we're looking at different periods. I have no disagreement about the last 40 years or the profligate nature of both parties during that period, but during the first half or so of the 20th century, Republicans did tend to have more balanced budgets. ADD: almost forgot this one too: The data comes from both the Fed via the Treasury and the NBER.

To: regli who wrote (59340)	11/12/2006 10:42:53 AM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

Debt hell for middle class in Australia theage.com.au VICTORIANS are taking out as many as 12 credit cards at a time and using all of them at once, as their personal debts spiral out of control. Waiting lists for free community financial counselling have blown out to as long as three months, with middle-income earners seeking help from services traditionally used by low-income workers. Ian Mackintosh, executive director of the Financial and Consumer Rights Council, the main body for Victoria's 130 financial counsellors, said that significant personal debt problems were no longer the province of the "working poor". "You are seeing people in what we might call 'the middle class' who are being afflicted by the same problems," he said. "I think the demographic is changing — it's creeping up the scale." Last week Mr Mackintosh took an urgent call for help from a man with more than $100,000 worth of debt accrued on 12 credit cards from banks and stores. All had been used to their limit, and some had been used concurrently to pay each other off. Another client was on an income of more than $100,000, was paying $3000-$4000 a month in payments on three different cards and had no money left to pay other bills. He said counsellors across Victoria were struggling to cope with the demand, with waiting lists regularly at six to 10 weeks and books closed from time to time to deal with the backlog of clients. Mr Mackintosh said the state needed 10 to 20 financial counsellors to be hired immediately to ease the waiting-list crisis, meaning that an extra $1.5 million to $2 million a year was needed for the $5 million budget now provided by the Department of Consumer Affairs for financial counselling. He also called for credit providers to be less focused on sales and more focused on the ability or the capacity of the person receiving the credit to be able to afford it. Mr Mackintosh said the council had taken 1100 calls for help since July. But most went to the Consumer Affairs Victoria helpline. According to a Consumer Affairs Victoria spokeswoman, the line took 6800 inquiries about credit problems between January 2005 and September 2006. Jo Boltin, a financial counsellor with the Port Phillip Community Group for 12 years, regularly sees clients with six, seven and eight credit cards, and has seen one with 10. "I have never seen such high limits on credit cards, such as $20,000," she said. "Now they use one credit card to pay off the other credit card, and it goes backwards and forwards until they can't do it any more."

To: regli who wrote (59340)	11/12/2006 10:52:33 AM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

Broward feels stress over high rate of foreclosures sun-sentinel.com Rate is four times national average, 2nd highest in U.S. By Paul Owers South Florida Sun-Sentinel November 11, 2006 Broward County had the second-highest mortgage foreclosure rate among the nation's top 100 metropolitan areas during the third quarter, according to a report released Friday. Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac said Broward had 8,431 foreclosures in the July-to-September quarter, or one for every 88 households. That's more than four times the national average. Only metropolitan Detroit was worse. Miami-Dade County had the fourth-highest foreclosure rate, with 9,380 in the quarter, or one for every 91 households. Palm Beach County was ranked 13th, with 3,643 foreclosures, or one for every 153 households. The results aren't surprising in a region where escalating home values from 2000 to 2005 forced buyers to overextend themselves. Many took out short-term, adjustable-rate mortgages and saw their monthly payments balloon as interest rates rose. "This is a pretty good leading indicator that there are signs of stress in the real estate market," Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wachovia Securities, said of the RealtyTrac report. While it's clear that the housing squeeze means more homeowners are falling behind on their monthly payments, the severity of the situation in South Florida is debatable because real estate analysts differ in how they report foreclosure data. RealtyTrac's figures also include homeowners in pre-foreclosure, the point when a lender files a notice of intention to take back the property. Many of those people resolve their debts before losing their homes. It can take six months or more for homeowners to go from defaulting on their mortgage payments to having a lender place them in foreclosure. About 80 percent of the properties headed to foreclosure don't go back to the lender, so focusing only on repossessed properties doesn't give an accurate assessment of the housing downturn, said Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing for RealtyTrac. Figures from the Mortgage Bankers Association and Foreclosure.com indicate that the foreclosure crunch isn't so bad nationwide or in South Florida. The mortgage bankers group separates mortgage delinquencies from foreclosures. The mortgage bankers reported that the percentage of mortgages nationally that started in the foreclosure process in the April-to-June quarter, the most recent data available, rose .43 percent. That's up from .41 percent in the first quarter and considered low by historical standards. Foreclosure.com reported August foreclosure statistics that showed only a minimal increase in this region. The Boca Raton-based company counts only properties that are in foreclosure, meaning lenders are moving to take back the homes. In Broward County, there were 25 homeowners in foreclosure in August, up from 15 in July. In Palm Beach County, there were 18 foreclosures in August, up from 14 in July. Foreclosure.com has not reported more recent monthly figures and says it will switch to a quarterly index beginning next year. Although housing experts attribute the increase in foreclosures to the abundance of exotic loans, local real estate observers say the problem also can be traced to the large number of real estate speculators in South Florida. Short-term investors bought properties, never intending to live there and hoping to sell them quickly for profits. But those speculators couldn't find buyers as the housing market slowed and were stuck making the mortgage payments. "They're the people who don't have an attachment to the home and are the quickest to give up on a property if the profit motive isn't there anymore," said Mike Larson, an analyst for Weiss Research in Jupiter. Louis Spagnuolo, a senior mortgage banker for Home 123 in Boca Raton, said his office has received a spate of calls recently from novice speculators looking to refinance their loans. They can't afford huge increases in their insurance premiums and property-tax bills. "They were blindsided," Spagnuolo said. He expects foreclosures to increase as long as the housing market remains soft, and that could last well into 2007. "We're in for a bumpy road for the next nine months," Spagnuolo said.