Thursday, Aug 14, 2008

So the UK are looking at early 2010 and beyond?

Wal Street Journal: Greenspan Sees Bottom - In Housing, Criticizes Bailout

"Home prices in the U.S. are likely to start to stabilize or touch bottom sometime in the first half of 2009," he said in an interview. Tracing a jagged curve with his finger on a tabletop to underscore the difficulty in pinpointing the precise trough, he cautioned that even at a bottom, "prices could continue to drift lower through 2009 and beyond."
His quarrel is with the approach the Bush administration sold to Congress. "They should have wiped out the shareholders, nationalized the institutions with legislation that they are to be reconstituted -- with necessary taxpayer support to make them financially viable -- as five or 10 individual privately held units," which the government would eventually auction off to private investors, he said.

Posted by stevie dee @ 03:32 PM (428 views) Add Comment

6 Comments

1. beartil2010 said...

Architect: This house is rubbish! It's not how I told you to build it all! Rank incompetence.

Builder: But Senor, ees jost how you design eet. See, here are the plans...

Thursday, August 14, 2008 04:12PM Report Comment
 

2. Stevie Dee said...

Good to see Granspan back on form. Sensible suggestions, clearly his eminent mind was not part of the Bush Administration's future plans. I am and always will be a great fan of Sir Alan Greenspan, but I believe in the future, and what he is saying now, shows that he was not necessarily given the freedom or choice that his reputation and competence deserved.

Thursday, August 14, 2008 04:23PM Report Comment
 

3. Sneaker said...

He has been consistently off with his calls every time he has spoken about housing.

Why should we listen this time?

Thursday, August 14, 2008 05:23PM Report Comment
 

4. little professor said...

Sensible sugestions???

Greenspan did offer one suggestion: "The most effective initiative, though politically difficult, would be a major expansion in quotas for skilled immigrants," he said. The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

He estimates the number of new households in the U.S. currently is increasing at an annual rate of about 800,000, of whom about one third are immigrants. "Perhaps 150,000 of those are loosely classified as skilled," he said. "A double or tripling of this number would markedly accelerate the absorption of unsold housing inventory for sale -- and hence help stabilize prices."


Wonder what the Daily Mail/Express readers would have to say about that over here?
"So conflicted....want higher house prices....but hate immigrants....my head just exploded....."

Thursday, August 14, 2008 05:29PM Report Comment
 

5. Stevie Dee said...

#3 & 4, I really do appreciate what you guys are saying, but I believe Sir Alan, had an exceptionally difficult administration to deal with, I admire a man (although in the public eye has been blamed for this fiasco), who is still looking for a solution or ideas and willing to step-up and express them. Some people would call this "stupidity" others would call it "brave".

Thursday, August 14, 2008 06:58PM Report Comment
 

6. harold said...

Stevie Dee, get real.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/schiff/2008/0801.html

Thursday, August 14, 2008 09:15PM Report Comment
 

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