The new Case-Shiller house price numbers (through January) came out yesterday. It was widely reported that they were ugly, and they were–the 20-city composite index was down 10.7% since January 2007 and 12.5% since its peak in July 2006. I was curious how much worse things would look if adjusted for inflation. Here’s what I [...]

The NYT has an article today contrasting John McCain’s views on the housing crisis with those of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It begins: SANTA ANA, Calif. — Drawing a sharp distinction between himself and the two Democratic presidential candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona warned Tuesday against vigorous government action to solve the deepening [...]

This was the view from Congress Street this morning. I was a little surprised at the Hummer. Are they allowed here?

Maybe it would have been simpler just to let Bear Stearns go bankrupt. When the Fed swept in just over a week ago to arrange a shotgun marriage between JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns, the idea was to avert a sudden collapse of the investment bank that might have caused credit markets to completely [...]

King Banaian points out something that Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd said back in November about why he was holding up confirmation of Randall Kroszner’s re-nomination to the Federal Reserve Board: “There’s one nomination here that would be for somebody [for] 14 years,” Dodd told reporters on a conference call. “We’re frankly getting down [...]

In the new issue of Time (with the Dalai Lama on the cover) is my attempt at explaining the Credit Crisis/The Big Unwind/Jenga to millions of people with better things to do than read the FT and WSJ: It was, no question, one of the most dramatic episodes in American financial history. A famously scrappy [...]

Mark Thoma points out that the Federal Reserve Board is now stocked entirely with Bush appointees, which isn’t really how the Fed is supposed to work. But he doesn’t go into why. Fed governors serve staggered 14-year terms, so clearly the idea is to keep any one president from appointing the entire board. But nowadays [...]

He held off for a while in hopes that maybe Washington could come through with enough monetary and fiscal stimulus to stave it off, but now Mr. Business Cycle himself is saying it: We’re in a recession. From CNNMoney: Lakshman Achuthan, the managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said the economy has now [...]

The news that something like one-third of Bear Stearns stock, which ain’t worth what it used to be, is in the hands of employees has raised lots of hue and cry about the idiocy of putting your retirement savings in company stock. Writes Megan McArdle: Unbelievable. Five years after Enron and WorldCom went down, taking [...]