Friday 29th of March 2024

driving the US economy: ridiculously lax underwriting standards to qualify unqualified buyers....

driving the US economy...

As for the sole source of support of late? That would be the U.S. consumer, without which math tells us the entire world economy would be in recession, not just the United States. In the fourth quarter in particular, spending was buoyed by gains in Transportation and Recreational services.

Sound familiar? It should.

Cars have literally been driving the U.S. economy in the aftermath of the collapse in the energy industry which took high-paying jobs down with it. To be specific, car sales to marginal buyers who cannot afford the payment for very long have pushed car sales to record levels.

If you’re hoping this economic prop is sustainable, and you should be given the alternative, you’re apt to be disappointed. A recent Bloomberg story shed light on how sales have been turbocharged. As was the case with subprime mortgage lending which pushed homeownership to record levels, new car-financing entrants have been responsible for record car sales.

According to J.P. Morgan Chase calculations, among subprime lenders that tap the securitization market to in turn finance their operations, new entrants now account for 28 percent of the business, multiples of the single-digit market share they had between 2011 and 2013. That makes these corporate whippersnappers the biggest players in the market. Their secret weapon? That would be ridiculously lax underwriting standards to qualify unqualified buyers.

As was the case with subprime mortgages, it’s a great growth industry. That is, until it’s not. Investors keeping the lights on at these companies have apparently started to balk at the number of loans backing the securities they’re supposed to be lining up to buy going sour. According to Fitch Ratings, subprime delinquencies of 60 days or more hit 5.16 percent in February, a stone’s throw from the previous record of 5.96 percent in October 1996.

 

read more: http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/americas-economy-shooting-blanks-

 

prepping for an economic zombie apocalypse...

That said, the Overstock CEO is prepping for an economic zombie apocalypse with gold and food for his employees.  If you read this website, Zero Hedge and many others, you probably understand all of the ways the system is doomed. High public debt and taxes; jobs being outsourced and automated; Wall Street swaps, derivatives and high-frequency trading; a Baby Boomer generation retires while their unemployed grandchildren are buried in college debt. Ominous clouds, indeed.

Michael Burry, the real-life market prophet from The Big Short, recently told New York Magazine that a bigger crisis than 2008 is looming because too-big-to-fail banks have only gotten bigger and central banks have lost control of the economy’s risk pricing mechanism – interest rates.

Where do we stand now, economically?
Well, we are right back at it: trying to stimulate growth through easy money. It hasn’t worked, but it’s the only tool the Fed’s got. Meanwhile, the Fed’s policies widen the wealth gap, which feeds political extremism, forcing gridlock in Washington. It seems the world is headed toward negative real interest rates on a global scale. This is toxic. Interest rates are used to price risk, and so in the current environment, the risk-pricing mechanism is broken. That is not healthy for an economy. We are building up terrific stresses in the system, and any fault lines there will certainly harm the outlook.

read more: http://www.activistpost.com/2016/01/will-the-us-economy-collapse-in-2016-predictions-and-preparations.html

 

And then we have Donald Trump's business failures...

a storm in the bank vaults...

Those looking for when the next financial crisis might be should set a reminder for January 1, 2018.

That's when a host of new rules are scheduled to come into force that are likely to further constrain lending ability and prompt banks to only advance money to the best borrowers, which could accelerate bankruptcies worldwide. As with any financial regulation, however, the effects will start to be felt sooner than the implementation date.

Two key rules are slated for 2018: the leverage ratio set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and International Financial Reporting Standard No. 9, defined by the International Accounting Standards Board. Other rules that require banks to stop using their own internal measures to assess risk start to be introduced from next year.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/beware-2018-when-the-next-perfect-banking-storm-may-hit-20160329-gntqem.html#ixzz44Lq4K5YB
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