Proverbs 22:7, ‘The borrower is servant to the lender,’ has resonated in the background of my financial upbringing.
Akin to other proverbs and parables (Proverbs 1:6), there’s much more beneath the surface worth pondering.
The president touted a manufacturing renaissance. However, economic indices show US manufacturing entering a Dark Age. Home sales are not looking bright, either.
Banks are more vulnerable to the housing market now than they were in 2007.
Most people in the mainstream will scoff at that statement. They’ll tell you that the situation is very different today. After all, we don’t have a big problem in the subprime mortgage market. We’re not seeing a big spike in defaults. That’s true. The problem is different this time. And it’s actually worse.
The US housing bubble continues to lose air at a rapid rate. Existing home sales fell for the 10th straight month in November. This stretch of declining home sales is longer than the housing bust preceding the 2008 financial crisis.
In another bad sign for a housing bubble that is quickly deflating, investor purchases of single-family homes tanked in the third quarter.
Meanwhile, overall home sales continue to tumble and prices are falling.
Artificially low interest rates blew up a big housing bubble. In a podcast, Peter Schiff explained that it is actually a bigger bubble than the one preceding the 2008 crash. But this time, it is combined with an overall bubble in the entire economy that dwarfs ’08. Peter said all of this has the makings of another massive financial crisis.
Air is hissing out of the housing bubble faster and faster every week.
Pending sales plunged in June and the inventory of homes on the market jumped as mortgage rates continue to rapidly rise.
As interest rates rise, the air continues to hiss out of the housing bubble.
Existing home sales tumbled to a two-year low in May. Sales fell to a seasonally adjusted 5.41 million units, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors. It was a 3.4% drop, bringing existing home sales to the lowest level since June 2020. May was the tenth consecutive month of year-over-year declines.
The Fed has barely started raising interest rates but the air is already seeping out of the housing bubble.
New single-family home sales plunged by 16.6% from March and were down 26.9% year on year. New home sales dropped to the lowest level since the lockdown in April 2020.
The Federal Reserve launched its fight against inflation earlier this month, but it wasn’t exactly shock and awe. The Fed raised interest rates by just a quarter percent. Peter Schiff called it the most anticipated and least significant rate hike ever. Meanwhile, the central bank continued to expand its balance sheet.
While the Fed’s tiny monetary policy adjustments won’t likely put a dent in inflation, they are already having an impact on the economy. Last week, mortgage rates charted their biggest weekly increase in 11 years.
How long will it take for rising rates to pop the housing bubble?
