It was a tough week for the U.S. economy:
- The Dow Industrials fell nearly 200 points to wind up at 11,951. It’s the sixth week in a row. The Dow suffered its longest slump through 2002. Blue-chip index fell below 12,000 for the first time since March. S&P 500 lost 2.2% this week to 1270.
- Ben Bernanke said the economic recovery remains “uneven.” But he is optimistic about growth in the second half of the year.
- OPEC warned on oil production; President Obama said he’d open up the U.S. strategic reserve
- First-time unemployment claims were higher than expected, at 427,000 once again. Only 25% of the 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession have been recovered.
- The Federal Reserve (through the QEI and II) now owns more U.S. Debt than China.
- Investors are turning bearish. The latest weekly reading by the American Association of Individual Investors shows 47.7% of its members are negative on the stock market and a meager 24.4% are bullish. As Barron’s points out, “Bull markets rarely go kaput when just about everyone pays at least lip service to the need for caution.”
- Greece looks to be teetering on the brink of default, causing the international investing community to worry about Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy (the PIIGS).
Other News on the Ilyce Glink Show
- Would you spend $230,000 on a guard dog? Hard to imagine, but celebrities and the super-rich have decided that spending $40,000+ on security is extremely important. Dogs that have won awards go for a lot more. Julia, the dog profiled in today’s New York Times, speaks German, and is trained in the “sport of Schutzhund.” Her trainer says she is a “perfect lady” inside the house and ferocious outside.
- Citigroup announced a big data breach and said their network has been hacked. Possibly 200,000 or more have been affected (watch for a letter). According to the Associated Press, “In just the past three months, hackers have penetrated 100 million Sony PlayStation accounts, the networks of Lockheed Martin and the customer email databases of a company that does marketing for Best Buy and Target.
- What are college commencement speakers talking about? According to a New York Times analysis in today’s paper, world issues were mentioned 296 times; love and passion were mentioned 118 times; job, work and career issues were mentioned 243 times; and the economy and money were only mentioned 33 times – and money (or the lack thereof) is going to be a key driver in these graduates lives. (Oh, well. I guess if I’d been asked to give a commencement address, that number would have gone up a bit!)
READ MORE IN THE THINKGLINK COMMUNITY
We produce anywhere from 15 to 25 original pieces of content each week in the ThinkGlink community. Here’s what you’ll find online this week:
Equifax Personal Finance Blog
- This week, I wrote a story called Housing Market Predictions: Home Values Continue to Sink, where I talked about the results of the latest S&P Case/Shiller Home Value Index.
- Financial Planner Roger Wohlner talked about Why You Might Need Life Insurance In Retirement.
- There’s also a very helpful story on the Tax Differences Between Owning And Renting A Home by Eva Rosenberg.
- Linda Rey writes about How the Insurance Marketplace Can Affect Your Insurance Premiums.
- From the Equifax Personal Finance Blog’s credit experts this week, we have a post by CredAbility.org’s Mechel Glass: Avoiding Foreclosure: Learning How the Application Process Works Can Help Homeowners Get Their Mortgage Loan Modified.
CBS Moneywatch.com
- This week, you’ll find Top 5 Turnaround Towns: Home Prices Expected To Rise Here, What Can You Buy For Less Than $3,000?
- I also write some posts on what celebrities like Charlie Sheen and Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are buying or selling.
ThinkGlink.com
- When I filled in for Clark Howard, I blogged about Fraud Alerts and Security Freezes in the show notes.
- But be sure to check out the site for some of our great new posts. Sign for for the FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER (on any page of the website, check the right navigation bar) for the latest pieces and Sam’s Real Estate Law column.
Browse and Buy Ebooks and Podcasts in the Think Glink Store
Hope you have a great week! We have a fantastic show planned for next week. Don’t forget to tune in 11a to 1p ET or listen online at www.wsbradio.com.
It will take until 2018-2020 to purge the excess surplus homes from the economy and this is best case. The shadow inventory of REO by banks remains a great domino waiting to fall. Depending on when and how the too big to fail banks collapse, and since nothing has been done to correct, regulate or downsize these banks, they will collapse again. The greed of upper management guarantees they will act recklessly and expect to be bailed out when they fail again.
Large banks collapsing are not a short term positive for housing and real estate, nor for job creation. Without either high paying jobs or very low home prices, housing demand will remain negative.
The problems are easily seen and can be remediated, but no one in either political party wants to change a corrupt system that has enriched them. They will continue to fritter away this chance to fix things and so things will collapse. This depression will grow worse, much worse before it gets better. It will likely cause a restructuring of our entire economy and our political system, since the two are so entwined.
Avoid debt, live a simple life and avoid being scammed by hope and change from either party, and take your money out of the big banks and put it in credit unions, floor safes or precious metals. The currency will devalue as the crisis continues, and the banks will tie up your money as they collapse. Putting your faith in this corrupt economic system is like walking across a termite weakened floor, the more time you spend in the weakened structure, the better chance you have of getting hurt.
The window to protect yourself is closing. The time to protect yourself is now.
45 million people are on food stamps, in 3 years it will be over 60 million, what happens when it becomes more important to pay for more wars, rather than fund food stamps? The stock market is a federal reserve hallucination and real wages are falling, prices are inflating and your dollars are worth less every day.
Nobody saw the crash of 2008 coming, except a few smart people who merely looked at facts. The facts are still out there, learn about how dire things really are and act in your best interest. Wall Street, the bankers and the government aren’t going to protect or help you – only you can take care of yourself, so do it.
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