Richard Suttmeier: Home Prices Could Fall Another 50%

The housing market continues to deteriorate.

Thursday’s report on May pending home sales was down 30% from the prior month and nearly 16% vs. a year ago.

The market weakness spans the country. Sales in the Northeast, Midwest and South fell more than 30%, the bright spot, the West, only fell 21%.The news comes after last week’s record low new home sales in May, which plummeted nearly 33%. Experts say the expiration of the new homebuyer tax credit is to blame for the sudden market softness.

Unfortunately, the market could get worse and prices could fall further, says Richard Suttmeier of ValuEngine.com. High unemployment and struggling community banks are two main causes. Saddled with bad housing and construction loans, local banks will continue to restrict lending.Plus, the failure of the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program means a steady flow of short sales. “People are going to be surprised when they see there have been short sales,” which negatively impact appraisals in the local community, says Suttmeier.How low can prices go?Using the S&P/Case-Shiller index as his guide, Suttmeier suggests homes across the country could lose half their value. “If it gets back, like stocks, back to the 1999-2000 levels, that’s another 50% down in home prices,” he says.

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“The Worst President in My Lifetime”, Howard Davidowitz on Obama

President Obama is having a rough go of things lately. As noted here last week, for the first time in his presidency, more Americans disapprove of Obama (48%) than approve of him (45%), according to the latest WSJ/NBC poll. And 62% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.“The American people are right,” says Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Co. A critic of Obama’s, from the start, Davidowitz refers to him as the “worst” President of his lifetime, even worse than of Jimmy Carter, based on: * — The War in Afghanistan: Davidowitz doesn’t see the point. As far as he can tell, after 7 years, hundreds of billions spent, and thousands of U.S. lives lost, the Afghans still can’t defend against the Taliban. Plus, the Afghan government is stealing billions in aid from the U.S. The WSJ reports, $3 billion in U.S. aid has been loaded onto planes by corrupt officials and flown out of the Kabul airport since 2007. “If they can’t be trained, if they’re stealing all our money, all our soldiers are dying. I don’t understand how any of this is logical,” proclaims Davidowitz. * — Out of Control Spending: Davidowitz thinks Obama has wasted time and taxpayer money pushing ‘Obamacare’ into law at a time when the debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to hit 62% by year’s end. “We’re going broke because of Medicare, Medicaid and everything else. He added another benefit, health-care. Can you explain that to me?” * — BP Oil Spill: “It could destroy the country,” he says. Davidowitz fears the continued loss of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day will drive gas prices higher, further choking and already struggling consumer. Meanwhile, he questions why the President waited 50 days to contact BP executives. Davidowitz recognizes Obama was handed a difficult hand upon entering office, and admits the political system is dysfunctional. Actually, in the many times Davidowitz has appeared on Tech Ticker he’s rarely had a nice thing to say about any politician, regardless of party. What he’d like to see is a return to fiscal responsibility, lacking these days. “Ross Perot did a huge service to this country when he ran because all he talked about was the budget and what was going on and it forced Clinton to deal with it,” Davidowitz says.

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Let Bad Banks Go Broke – says, Howard Davidowitz – Otherwise All These Bailouts Will Crush The Economy

Howard Davidowitz is a bear on America. If you’ve watched any of the recent clips, you know he’s negative on stocks, the economy and the political system. (If you haven’t seen them, check the links below.)Much of Davidowitz’s frustrations stem from the bailout of our financial system. “If a bank is bad, you let it go broke,” he says. “The bondholders lose their money, because they should. The stockholders lose their money, because they should. Lots of people get fired job, because they should. That’s the solution to the problem.”In the 1980s, Davidowitz’s firm worked on the restructuring of then struggling retailer Toys “R” Us. “We kept the good, we cut the bad. That’s how restructuring works,” he says. The national retail chain was cut down to 13 stores, but was kept alive. Today, the company is preparing for an IPO, five years after private equity giant KKR purchased the company for $6.6 billion. Again, Davidowitz believes the same measures should have been taken with the banks. Sure, bankruptcy is a painful solution in the short-term, but he believes the government’s rescue of some of our biggest financial institutions has had, and will continue to have, catastrophic economic consequences. As economist and Carnegie Mellon professor Allan Meltzer once said: “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin.”

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Howard Davidowitz says, U.S. Economy is a Complete Disaster

The U.S. economy is in shambles and Americans will continue to see high unemployment and lower living standards in the years to come, Howard Davidowitz tells Henry and Aaron in the accompanying clip. Davidowitz lays much of the blame for the economy’s woes at the feet of the Obama administration, which he calls “the worst of my lifetime.”Obama “Mr. Mass Destruction”Davidowitz says that the key to Obama’s success is his ability to sell his policies to the public. He can confidently read from a teleprompter and appear competent and in control, when in reality, “it’s one big bag of empty words,” Davidowitz says of Obama’s messages.Davidowitz contends that the President’s spending, including the health-care bill, is creating massive deficits that will take the U.S. years to dig itself out of. “He is Mr. Mass Destruction,” Davidowitz says of Obama. “I mean he is a human destroyer. This guy has spent his way into oblivion and we don’t have a budget. He is surrounded by a bunch of complete incompetents, led by himself. “Housing GloomAs far as the actual economy goes, Davidowitz’s chief concern is the strained state of the housing market, from which the bad news continues to pour in. According to Davidowitz, Americans are facing an $8 trillion negative wealth effect from the bursting of the housing bubble.”We’re talking about some serious money here,” Davidowitz exclaims. “I mean this is a complete disaster and that’s why we are going to have a double dip. We’re guaranteed a double dip in housing.”Small Businesses and UnemploymentDavidowitz says that the job market is also in ruins, noting for every new job there are six applicants. As a result of the intense competition for positions, employers can offer lower wages. Young people entering the work force today can expect to make less money in their lifetime than previous generations. Considering the majority of new jobs are created by small businesses, Davidowitz argues that new regulations governing loans to small businesses are only making matters worse — both for the entrepreneurs and the millions of people out of work.”We have this insane new regulation,” Davidowitz says. “Community banks will not even be able to fill out the forms. They’ll pack up and quit. They’re already underwater. Commercial real estate is still terrible.” The Future a Massive StruggleAsked whether he thought the U.S. would experience another Great Depression, Davidowitz said the coming years will look more like Japan today vs. the U.S. in the 1930s.People will be making and spending less money and the nation as a whole will be dealing with the consequences of the deficit, he says. “We are in a struggle, day by day it’s ugly. At the core, when we look at our debt, we are going to have to deal with it.”A few months ago, while other analysts claimed that the economy would continue to follow a V-shaped recovery path, Davidowitz seemed out of step by insisting the nation’s problems were still dire. Regardless of what you think of his message or style, Davidowitz’s doom and gloom outlook now appears much more credible.

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Gary Shilling says, House Prices Still Have Another 10%- 20% To Fall

A year ago, house prices finally stopped collapsing after two years of brutal declines. Over the following few quarters, moreover, they actually rose. This led many observers to conclude that the housing bottom had been reached and that we were headed for a v-shaped bounce.Not Gary Shilling.Gary Shilling, head of economic research firm A. Gary Shilling & Co., thinks house prices still have another 10%-20% to fall. Just as bad, Gary thinks this fall will happen over the next three years, meaning that house prices won’t bottom until 2013. Most people think prices have already bottomed, or will bottom later this year or next.Why is Gary so bearish?Supply versus demand.Basically, Gary says, we still have way too many houses relative to the number of people who want to buy them. Consumers are under pressure, overloaded with debts and struggling to find work, and the mass-hallucination that investing in housing was a “sure thing” is now a distant memory. These days, many would-be home buyers are moving in with relatives or downsizing or dumping second homes. And the supply-demand balance is so out of whack, in Gary’s view, that even super-low interest rates won’t keep prices afloat.

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Inflation or deflation – or Both? Mish vs. Dr. Doom

Which is the greater threat, inflation or deflation?In Marc Faber and Michael “Mish” Shedlock, we found two market watchers ready (and able) to champion both sides of this great debate.Shedlock, an investment advisor with SitkaPacific Capital and author of the economics blog, MISH’S Global Economic Trend Analysis, made the case for deflation: Credit is contracting, despite Ben Bernanke’s best efforts to flood the financial system with liquidity.”The money supply is just sitting there as excess reserves on bank balance sheets,” Mish says. “Bernanke can print this money but unless it makes its way into the real economy we’re not going to see inflation.”In addition, he predicts “another leg down” in housing and commercial real estate, more consumer loan defaults, and notes state and local governments are (finally) cutting back on spending in the face of falling tax receipts and budget deficits. All these trends will contribute to the deflationary force of credit contraction, Mish declares.But Shedlock is missing one critical factor says Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report: “When the economy’s bad, governments pile up these fiscal deficits and they print money” to offset the deleveraging of the private sector, he says. “They’re going to print and print and print.”If the economy sours again and especially if deflationary forces take hold, we’ll have “even more stimulus packages and even more printing,” Faber says. “That will bankrupt western governments – not just in the U.S. but everywhere. “And by that, he means the dollar and other western currencies will collapse, leading to a bout of rising (if not hyper-) inflation around the globe, which will spur all manner of societal unrest and geopolitical strife. Now you know why they call him “Dr. Doom.”

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Robert Prechter sees “The Biggest Bubble in History”

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Delinquent Mortgages Hit Record 15%

• The percentage of loans that were in foreclosure or behind at least one payment hit 15.02%, the most since MBA’s records began in 1972.   Foreclosures will likely stay high in 2010.
• Real estate Web site Zillow.com recently said one in five homeowners were underwater in Q4!!
• 4.5 million foreclosure filings are expected this year, up from 2.8 million in 2009.
• “The bulk of foreclosures are coming in spring and summer, and we do expect home prices to continue falling through the end of this year,” said Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Moody’s Economy.com.

Gary Shilling: Higher Government Pay Will “Likely Lead to a Tax Revolt”

14.8 million Americans are currently out of work and looking for a job, according to a report released today by the Bureaus of Labor Statistics. Even if you do have a job, wages have not increased substantially over the last ten years, with one exception: government workers.Thanks to generous health-care benefits and pensions, it pays – more than ever – to work in the public sector. Economist Gary Shilling fears dubious consequences if state and local workers continue to make more money and at the same time governments raise taxes and cut services.”In good times, nobody really cares that much but now we’re not in good times,” says the President of A. Gary Shilling & Co. “The basic problem is pay differential, as I see it, and that I think is likely to lead to a taxpayer revolt.”Shilling’s point about pay is illustrated well in this recent research by Dr. Mark J. Perry, professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.According to a December report from the BLS, state and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked ($26.24 for wages and $13.60 for benefits) for total employee compensation in September 2009. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour ($19.45 for wages and $8.05 for benefits). In other words, government employees make 45% more on average than private sector employees.According to another BLS report, compensation for private industry workers has increased by 6.9% between December 2006 and December 2009, compared to a 9.8% increase for government workers (state and local) over the same period.If that’s not enough, the trend will lead to a lowering of our standard of living, even for the highest paid workers on Wall Street, Shilling tells Henry in the accompanying clip. If reforms like the Volcker Rule take hold, Shilling’s “not sure Wall Street (will be) permanently bidding up the prices of Manhattan real estate and vacation homes in the Hamptons.”

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Marc Faber Is “Highly Confident” the Future Will Be Very Bleak: See Video on Tech Ticker – Yahoo! Finance

“The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today, wars, massive government debt defaults and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society,” Marc Faber writes in the September issue of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.A statement like that pretty much speaks for itself, but it’s a bit more complicated than appears on first blush.Faber has been bullish — especially on commodities and emerging market stocks — for some time now and believes the current global recovery trade will last another two-to-three years, as discussed in more detail in a forthcoming clip. But he has major long-term concerns about the dollar’s long-term viability given rising U.S. deficits, massive unfunded mandates and the fact “we have a money-printer at the Fed.”This combination will eventually lead to runaway inflation, wholesale debasement of the dollar, and a major lowering of living standards for most Americans and many Europeans as well, says Faber, who is “highly confident” in this grim prediction.

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