Mixed Economic News Leaves Outlook both Grim and Confused
Comments
03/26/2008 - posted by L. Bancroft
The “few dozen zealots” that Jim Haughey says protested the Bear Stearns bailout represented an 18-year-old organization called the National Assistance Corporation of America. Such zealots as CitiGroup and Bank of America work with the NACA to provide over $9 billion in low-interest mortgages to low and moderate income home owners. While lecturing the media on how to cover the news, Mr. Haughey might refrain from maligning a worthy organization that has managed its affairs a good deal better than Bear Stearns.
Today brought reports that new home sales fell (or did they?), that durable goods manufacturers can not cut production fast enough to keep already too high inventories from rising, that refinancing mortgage applications soared, that oil refineries cut production because they are losing money selling gasoline and that “housing activists”, protesting in the Bear Stearns lobby, and their media supporters still expect to be rescued from the consequences of their predatory borrowing.