Tag Archives: US housing crisis

Another way to look at this is a ratio of existing to new home sales. This ratio was fairly stable from 1994 through 2006, and then the flood of distressed sales kept the number of existing home sales elevated and depressed new home sales. (Note: This ratio was fairly stable back to the early '70s, but I only have annual data for the earlier years). In general the ratio has been trending down since the housing bust - and is getting close to the historical ratio - and I expect this ratio...

A new explanation of the financial crisis arguing that the proximate cause was not sub-prime but flippers that caught when the music stopped, and the lenders that were funding them. The sub-prime borrowers were a knock-on effect of loose lending. The grim tale of America’s “subprime mortgage crisis” delivers one of those stinging moral slaps that Americans seem to favor in their histories. Poor people were reckless and stupid, banks got greedy. Layer in some Wall Street dark arts, and...