The sobering forecasts for the housing foreclosures in the next few years is over roughly 8 million homes. And to give validity to these numbers, the source is as close to the problem as possible...the FDIC, whose responsibility is regulating the nations federal banks. The response from top officials at the FDIC is that programs to reduce the epidemic have been frequently discussed for the last year. However, they have pretty honest in their assessment of these programs so far by admitting that the problem continues to get worse.
The next dilemma is a large number of people, who are staying in their houses, are seeing the prices from that investment sharply dropping. Take the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller housing index. This measure the price movements of the 20 largest city and it describes a record 18.2 percent drop in November when compared to the previous year.
As the housing numbers fall, the unemployment numbers rise:
The housing numbers become even more sobering when you take into account that The Labor Department stated that unemployment rates across the states rose sharply in December, and leading the way was Indiana (my home state) and South Carolina with the largest monthly gains.
Now I have receive a few questions that range from:
~ Where does the economy go from here?
~ Will the government stimilus bill work?
~ What does this mean for the stock market, my city, or my job?
I will try to do my best to tackle the problem in a way that is easy to understand in my next few posts. Stay tuned!
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