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Housing Prices: How Far to Go until Bottom?

Menzie Chinn (September 23rd, 2008) Writes:

I'll just take the market's view here; using the futures prices from the CME (via ino.com), prices will fall about another 16% from June (or 17% in log terms):

caseshiller1.gif Figure 1: Log Case-Shiller 10 city price index, (red), CME futures prices (red squares), and CPI adjusted SP Case-Shiller 10 city price index (dark blue). CPI-All rescaled to 100 2008M01-08M06. NBER defined recessions shaded gray. Dashed line indicates start of plotted futures data. Source: Standard and Poors' [xls], ino.com - real estate (accessed 21 Sep 2008), St. Louis FRED II, NBER, and author's calculations.

The latest reading from ino.com for the Case Shiller US composite futures indicates a nominal bottom in May 2010, with a reading of 151.6 (or a bottom of of 151.4 in May 2011 if you want to nitpick.

This would represent about a 40% decline (in log terms) in housing prices

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Tags for this Post:
Economics, Ofheo, Real Estate

Poll Results: Grading Bernanke & Paulson

Prieur du Plessis (August 22nd, 2008) Writes:

Over the past few days I conducted a snap poll on the performance of Messrs Bernanke and Paulson over the past year, i.e. the first year of the credit crisis. The poll was devised in order broadly to gauge readers’ sentiments regarding the gentlemen’s actions during testing times.

In total about 400 people participated in the poll and responded as follows:

22-aug-p1d.jpg

22-aug-p2c.jpg

Bernanke’s grades were all over the show, with about 42.4% of the participants rating his performance above average and 57.6% expressing the opinion that he performed in the bottom half of the grading card.

Paulson, however, had the bulk of his grades in the low numbers, with as many as 30.1% of the participants giving

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Did Fannie and Freddie cause the mortgage crisis?

James Hamilton (July 16th, 2008) Writes:
Article Source Some thoughts about the role played by the GSEs in the run-up in mortgage debt and house prices. Paul Krugman ably lays out the case for why it's conceivable that Fannie and Freddie could have made a contribution: Here's the background: Fannie Mae-- the Federal National Mortgage Association-- was created in the 1930s to facilitate homeownership by buying mortgages from banks, freeing up cash that could be used to make new loans. Fannie and Freddie Mac, which does pretty much the same thing, now finance most of the home loans being made in America. The case against Fannie and Freddie begins with their peculiar status: although they're private companies with stockholders and profits, they're "government-sponsored enterprises" established by federal law, which means that they receive special privileges. The most important of these privileges is implicit: it's the belief of investors that if Fannie and Freddie are threatened with failure, ...

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