The $3,200,000,000,000 Question: Why Housing Has Much More To Drop Before It Bottoms

Hit the link
The chart is such reality check, that it's mind blowing, when viewed in the perception of unemployment.
That 3 trillion dollar difference that housing needs to come down, used to
jobs of the trades. Plumbers electricians, framers, flooring people, painters etc....
Damn that was depressing and what makes it more so is that they're pushing hard the "Unmanned Industry" which only makes for more jobs lost, in the unending direction of none made.

It is no secret that having failed repeatedly at the trickle down aspect of QE1, QE2, Op Twist 1, Op Twist 2 (and implicitly LTRO 1 and LTRO 2) as it pertains to the man in the street (if not the man in Wall Street, who was subject to 1-2 years of subpar bonuses which have since regained their upward trendline), the last effort the central planners of the world, and the administration, have is to furiously do everything in their power to reflate housing one more time, following what is already a triple dip in home prices ever since the December 2007 start of the Second Great Depression. Which is why month after month we get seasonally fudged, conflicted and outright manipulated data from various sources how housing has bottomed, for real this time, and things are finally looking up. Remember: with any con game, the key word is confidence, and the US consumers need to regain their confidence. Sadly, as the following very simple chart and accompanying explanation, the answer to the housing question is only one: there will be no housing recovery until much more debt is eliminated. $3.2 trillion to be precise. Everything else is merely fits and spurts of upward action predicated by easy money hitting the market either directly, or via the "REO-to-Rental" stimulus program du jour, which lasts for a few months then promptly evaporates.

The chart in question:

Jobless youths in Tunisia riot using Facebook

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110111/ap_on_hi_te/af_tunisia_riots_4

And why did it start?
Over lack of a permit to sell fruits and vegetables to earn some money to take care of his own kids.
Micro management over how you can earn some money doesn't go over to well in times of a depression.



In the cruise ship brochures, Tunisia is a land of endless sandy beaches, warm Mediterranean waters, ancient ruins and welcoming bazaars.

But behind the postcard-perfect facade, legions of jobless youths who see no future are seething under the iron-fisted leadership of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and worried fathers wonder how they will feed their families. Their despair over Tunisia's soaring unemployment and rising food prices has fueled more than three weeks of deadly riots, posing the most significant challenge yet to the 74-year-old leader who grabbed power 23 years ago in a bloodless coup.





The unrest began after Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old with a university degree, set himself on fire when police in the central town of Sidi Bouzid confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling without a permit. He later died in a hospital near Tunis, and his desperate act touched a nerve with educated, unemployed youths nationwide.

Unemployment in Tunisia is officially around 14 percent but is much higher in rural areas and among youths.

The death even sparked several copycat suicides — in the latest, an unemployed 23-year-old climbed an electric pylon Tuesday near Bouazizi's hometown and electrocuted himself, union official Mohamed Fadhel told the AP.

The unrest has hopscotched to towns around the country, concentrated in, but not limited to, regions less visible to the waves of European tourists who flock to Tunisia's beaches. Public buildings, schools, cars and even police stations have been attacked.

Ben Ali, whose portrait hangs in public offices across the country, has labeled the rioting "terrorist acts" controlled from abroad. On Monday, he ordered all high schools and universities, seen as hotbeds of activism, to shut down indefinitely.

4 Million set to lose unemployment benefits even without an extension

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/unemployment-benefits-99ers-obama_n_791682.html

Gee it took them long enough to figure that out, didn't it?

Wanna talk FEMA camps yet?
Those assets can't legally be foreclosed on, so no food stamps pending.
Being stuck between a rock and a hard place
Will now lead to starvation.
Voluntary FEMA committal, will be the only answer, and not a specially hard decision to make if you've got kids.
Your gonna do what you gotta do.
You won't watch them starve to death
Not when you have a sure way to get them food.
3 hots and a cot will seem just like heaven.




Even as Congress debates whether to extend emergency unemployment checks for more than 6 million Americans who are approaching the 99-week limit, some four million others are facing the certain end of their benefits over the next year, unless an entirely new program is crafted.

This is the sobering conclusion of a report released by the President's Council of Economic Advisers on Thursday. The study forecast that the exhaustion of unemployment benefits for so many will curb spending power enough to significantly impede an already weak economic recovery.

Without an agreement to extend the program, the economy will lose about 600,000 jobs, as the spending enabled by continued unemployment checks ceases. National economic output--which expanded at an annual pace of 2.5 percent during the summer months--would fall off by 0.6 percent.

That disturbing prospect does not even account for the roughly four million people who would exceed even the extended limits in the emergency program. Were that many jobless people left to fend themselves without unemployment checks, that would pose significant risks for the broader economy, say economists. They cite the fact that consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of all economic activity.

Yet even those who lose their unemployment checks will not necessarily qualify for other forms of aid, like food stamps, said Burtless.

"Only a pretty small fraction of the people who exhaust benefits are going to qualify," Burtless said. Many of these workers have long been employed and have accumulated savings and assets such as houses, which makes them ineligible for support, he said