The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

I know this post won't make it into the "Positive News" group or be a "Featured Post" but I don't really care, we have a crisis on our hands and nobody is doing much to stem the crisis.  I am not going to pretend that this is not happening. And while I have been making jokes about Washington's sl...

Just a couple of days ago I made a satirical post about a solution for the Big 3 automakers to get the money that they are asking Congress for. Here is the post:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/794114/How-to-solve-the-Detroit-automaker-crisis I suggested that they turn themselves into banks so t...

I wish I can take credit for that headline but I can't. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point (and a couple of other books), recently said this during an interview on CNN.com. "Success is a product of unusual opportunity". We are certainly in an "unusual opportunity" today. The point ...

Today the National Association of REALTORS published their quarterly "Median Sales Price of Existing Single-Family Homes for Metropolitan Areas" report. The (old) news was indeed gloomy, but I also question it's relevance - as I have been for a while now. The report shows that the median home val...

For those of you who don't know, Diana Olick is CNBC's housing correspondent and she also has her own blog on CNBC.com. She made a great post today about something that I have been talking about now for a while, housing affordability:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/15837671/ But it may not be what you t...

The following blog post is satire, it is not intended as a real solution to the Detoit car maker crisis, although it is entirely possible that this is something that the Big 3 are considering. I have been reading and watching and listening, and then reading some more about the Detoit car maker cr...

A couple weeks ago I had made a post about the possibilitythat we could be in the beginning stages of our own version of Japan's lost decade:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/771485/Is-This-Our-Lost-Decade This was a period of time in which Japan's stock market and housing market experienced "bub...

Last night as I was about to sit down and watch my Boston Celtics lose to the Denver Nuggets, which was an accomplishment in and of itself, I remembered in a short instant that the shuttle was going launch at five of the hour. I darted into the room across the hall and grabbed our two sons, Jacks...

Lenn Harley makes a great post about the bottom up appoach to solving this economic crisis - something I have been talking about for nearly a year - mostly to myself :)* * * * WARNING!  HARD CORE REAL ESTATE TALK * * * * Do "WE NEED MORE BAILOUTS?"  Jim Crawford asks that question in a thoughtful...

A couple of days ago I made a post about Hammering Hank Paulson The Secretary of Goldman Sachs, excuse me, Treasury, and his new direction with the TARP ($700 billion bailout) money:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/786299/Does-anybody-else-have-a-problem-with-this A direction that is a 180 degre...