The New York Times ran a story this past weekend about the death of real estate as the traditional vehicle through which American families built wealth. The National Association of Realtors today came out with figures that showed sales of real estate for the month of July were at their lowest since 1995. Our recovery is threatened and we need an evil fall guy on whom we can blame the decline of housing. Let’s gather the usual suspects and see who’s done it. First up is the sub-prime borrower who let go of the house next door to you. He looks normal, but without a job or unemployment benefits, no can’t be him. Next is your local builder but he has just filed for personal bankruptcy and is working odd repair jobs to make ends meet, it can’t be him. Last is your local Realtor and she looks tired. It must be the two other jobs she’s working while helping the family stay current on their bills. Maybe this time around its the politicians. Well, no the current administration -although they actually thinks of themselves as modern day Jesus raising the dead they’re delusional about the powers they have, its definitely not them.
There is one and only one evil suspect and that is Wall Street. Yes the Wall Street that changed Location, Location, Location to Derivative, Derivative, Derivative and forever moved the control of the housing market from its traditional market forces to the forces that are subject to daily and hourly manipulations of nerdy guys with PhD’s in Physics and Mathematics sitting behind Algorithms. One equation can make them Billions in a fraction of a second and destroy the lives of millions who worked all their lives to afford a roof over their heads. Yes real estate is dead, and math and science have turned into evil machines of mass destruction. Our government is so clueless to the nature of Wall Street’s work that if the the smartest scientist/investigator looks into any of their proprietary and highly secretive Mortgage Backed Securities models or into any of the hedge funds that made bets on the failure of the American Dream he/she can’t figure it out if their life depended on it. Yes these are the Masters of the Universe and part of their plan to dominate is to free real estate from its traditional qualities and let it bleed to death while they get rich from the fees they make in manipulating the securities they create.
So, as millions of Americans today were deciding to either let go their home because they can no longer hold on or to reduce their asking prices yet again, Wall Street was cashing in on its bets that confirmed that Housing is dead.
For a detailed Memetic analysis of how Wall Street caused the housing crisis, read my post from April 2009 at this link