5/10/2011 PERMALINK
The housing crash is actually accelerating. Home listing site Zillow.com reports that average home prices are down 8% from a year ago, 3% over the quarter, and prices are continuing to fall at the rate of about 1% every month. This has pushed the percentage of homeowners in negative-equity positions (home worth less than the mortgage) to a record 28%. A new milestone has been reached. Cumulative homeowner's equity has now declined from $12.8 trillion in 2006 to $6.3 trillion in 2011. Americans have now lost more than half of what is the single largest asset for most families, their home equity. Massive home ownership subsidies created by Congress in the form of Fannie, Freddie and the FHA. Plus a decade of below market interest rates enforced by the Federal Reserve Bank. Combined to produce a bubble so massive that its popping has now produced 57 straight months of declining home values, destroying the security of millions of American families, with no end yet in sight. In the totally corrupt Crony Capitalism system that America was made over into over the last decade. The extremely wealthy Wall Street bankers, the ones who profited most from the mortgage scam, had their massive losses covered by Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank. The middle class has been chosen to take the bullet for this massive debacle, entirely created by Congress, the Fed and Wall Street's Crony Capitalist banksters. While the massive amount of new debt Congress and the Fed have taken on to pay for the bailout of their bankster benefactors will be grinding down the American middle class for generations to come. And not one prominent bankster has been punished for creating all those trillions in fraudulent mortgages that the Fed and Congress have now assumed liability for.