"A number of reasons help explain why wages don’t and won’t drop, beginning with federal and state minimum-wage laws" << MORE >>

Today 25.7 million Americans celebrated Labor Day unemployed or underemployed. The President's response to their suffering was more of the policies which created The Great Depression, have plagued the Japanese economy for 20 years, and are intensifying The Affordable Mortgage Depression. << MORE >>

Higher taxes, more Government spending, less savings and rapidly growing unfunded pension liabilities. This is Social Security's legacy. << MORE >>

Demand this weak, especially in an environment defined by high numbers of distressed transactions, is consistent with falling prices << MORE >>

In January 2009 (the month before the Stimulus Spending Bill was passed) new home sales were running at 339 thousand per year. For three consecutive months new home sales have been well below pre housing stimulus levels. << MORE >>

Adequate due diligence should be performed when selecting any asset manager. With respect to Fisher Investments, the author believes that minimum due diligence should include a thorough review of the firm's quarterly communications to investors from 2006 through 2008. << MORE >>

Overvalued housing prices should have continued to fall over the past two years. Instead, values were propped up and even artificially inflated in some markets through subsidized demand. Today, there are an incremental 900,000 to 1.5 million housing stimulus homeowners with little to no equity in their new purchases who will be underwater in the months to come. The Government has created a new supply of foreclosures, delayed a resolution to the economic downturn, and done so at extraordinary cost. << MORE >>

"Housing prices do not respond well to high, rising or record inventory." - 5/24/10 << MORE >>

By propping up prices the Government hasn't avoided a worse recession, they have dragged it out unnecessarily while failing to resolve the structural challenges to a recovery. << MORE >>

Businesses don't invest capital or hire new employees if they can't decipher what the future will look like. The only thing more debilitating economically is certainty that the future operating environment will be less favorable than that which exists today. << MORE >>

America's dynamism, the source of our wealth and economic resiliency, is not a birthright. It exists only because the economic, political and judicial systems erected by the country's founders (and largely kept intact since) reward creativity, hard work and thoughtful risk-taking. Our economic system is productive because it allows capital (of any sort) to flow to its best use. American economic adaptability is neither inherent or perpetual. It may easily be shackled by sufficiently destructive public policy. << MORE >>

The Affordable Mortgage Depression continues unabated driven by fundamental forces, but augmented by the consistently misguided public policy response of the last two Presidents and Congresses. << MORE >>

The "Summer of Recovery" will go down in history as the period during which dismal economic data began to peak through the rosily distorted facade that blurred reality since February 2009. << MORE >>

One bedroom Florida condo with a listing price of $15,000. << MORE >>

Lawrence Yun - NAR's Official Depression Clown << MORE >>

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"The American system of Democracy will prevail until that moment when the politicians discover that they can bribe the electorate with their own money" Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville << MORE >>

This person has realized the American Dream of Homeownership, and all he really wants to do is sell his house and become a renter. << MORE >>

Pre-expiration transactions had until June 30th to close in order to benefit from the tax credit. This peculiar arrangement has created a timing difference where May prices are unreflective of real time market conditions during that month. << MORE >>

During the attempt to prop up housing the median downward slope changed markedly, but prices never appreciated. << MORE >>

Any American who saves money, invests it and recoups a capital gain becomes the victim of unqualified thievery at the hands of our politicians. << MORE >>

The more jobs supposedly manufactured, the higher unemployment theoretically would have been without the spending, and the worse his projections, used to justify stimulus, look in retrospect. << MORE >>

In 1931 Hoover did expand government spending to no productive end. He also raised taxes which was damaging to the economy. FDR continued this tax and spend strategy, and the depression dragged on until WWII. Barack Obama has also emulated "tax and spend" but is doing so on a different order of magnitude. << MORE >>

"The Harvard study suggests the Congressmen are really bringing home less economic prosperity." << MORE >>

"The wives of 7-Eleven co-founders Wilbur and Earl Slurpee hand out samples of their icy treat to ease the suffering of the children of the Great Depression." File photo, The 7-Eleven Museum - July 11, 1934 << MORE >>

"No one opposes unemployment benefits as a transition aid for people to get back on their feet and find a new job. Unemployment benefits are a safeguard for individuals down on their luck. But to argue that unemployment benefits actually reduce unemployment is disingenuous at best, and could induce our government to enact policies that have the effect of destroying our nation's production base from whence all benefits ultimately flow." << MORE >>

Fading economic distortions, which were concocted using unsustainable, deficit-financed spending, bear no resemblance to a double-dip recession. << MORE >>

Revolving credit is contracting at approximately 10% per year. << MORE >>

Understanding why low mortgage rates will not stop the decline of housing prices is centrally important to fully comprehending The Affordable Mortgage Depression. << MORE >>