Articles About Economics

So what to make of President-Elect Obama’s progressive economic policies?  What his critics miss are some of the most intriguing features of his plan — providing companies with tax credits for hiring new employees; raising the investment expensing limit for small businesses; eliminating the capital gains rate for investing in small businesses; and the massive […]

With change expected to begin in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2009, the commercial real estate industry is bracing itself for the incoming Obama administration and the 111th Congress.  CoStar Advisor recently polled commercial real estate professionals on the top issues of the first 100 days.  The resulting list includes such policy issues as saying […]

The residential mortgage market is experiencing an unexpected – but welcome — boom, a result of interest rates for 30-year fixed-rate loans falling to 5.47 percent from 5.99 percent.  According to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly review, the average rate for a 15-year fixed-rate loan – popular when refinancing – fell to 5.13 percent […]

Wonder where real estate titan Sam Zell’s investment dollars are going during these recessionary times?  Despite the global financial crisis, Zell is investing in countries like Brazil, Egypt, Mexico and China – all of which he says have a shortage of affordable housing and lack infrastructure. Zell, the chairman of Chicago-based Equity Group Investments, LLC, likes […]

It’s now official.  We are in a recession and it started a lot longer ago than we thought – in December of 2007.  That’s the verdict of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee, the non-profit organization that economists and the government regard as the arbiter on recessions. According to the […]

Britain’s bailout of its ailing banks reflects a model that some critics characterize as nothing short of socialism, while the $750 billion bailout program in the United States is viewed as corporate welfare with very little oversight. Without supporting one or the other, following is a bare-bones comparison of the two programs: In the United Kingdom: […]

Inflation has returned with a vengeance, with a 1.1 percent increase reported during June – courtesy of soaring energy and food prices.  The Federal Reserve reacted to the warning signs on June 25, when it froze the Fed funds rate at two percent – ending nine months of rate cuts that it hoped would revive […]

Paulson’s TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) turnaround – he originally dismissed the bailout package as a recipe for “failure” -may demonstrate that his revised response is a gesture to public opinion.  At present, the bailout also seems geared more to help Main Street than Wall Street, a strategy that will play well with the general […]

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is sitting on $350 billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money, and can’t quite settle on the best way to spend it.  When approved by Congress in October, the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) bill’s purpose was to purchase bad mortgage assets that had frozen the credit markets. The Treasury Department […]

Stressed single-family homeowners trying to pay their mortgages might be in for some relief after a recent move by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s leading mortgage-finance issuers.  Since being placed under a government conservatorship in September, Fannie and Freddie have devised a plan to help homeowners who are 90 days behind in their […]