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An illusion of recovery

The media hype would suggest that the GFC is slowly behind us. Markets are up, and yes, there is that troubling Dubai "issue", but all things being equal things are looking up.

Not so quick! TomDispatch reveals the real side of how people are faring in that bastion of free enterprise, the US of A:

"Talk about a devastated landscape... Any which way you look, the housing numbers are relentlessly bad. For example, 23% of U.S. homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, according to Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty of the Wall Street Journal. They possess, in the vivid lingo of the housing industry, “underwater mortgages.” Among them, 5.3 million households have mortgages that are at least 20% higher than their home’s value, 520,000 of whom have already received default notices. In the meantime, home-loan delinquencies and home repossessions are now at record highs. According to E. Scott Reckard of the Los Angeles Times, by the end of September, “one in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure,” and the chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association expects the number of foreclosures to keep rising deep into 2010.

Worse yet, foreclosures on large rental-unit buildings are also on the rise. This means, reports Robin Shulman of the Washington Post, that not just homeowners but renters are now being swept up in the housing crisis as landlords of apartment buildings in trouble let upkeep go while maintenance problems soar. Nor are the latest figures on home prices offering much cheer. Two key price indexes released last week, write David Streitfeld and Javier Hernandez of the New York Times, “indicated that the momentum the housing market showed over the late spring and summer is faltering.”

Continue reading, here - and also see how Wall St. is capitalising from the misfortune of those referred to above.

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