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

"How is that going to get anybody to buy a house?" That's the question CNBC's Diana Olick asked Larry Kudlow on CNBC on Monday in response to Kudlow's economic proposal to provide a corporate tax holiday followed by additional corporate tax cuts. The fear I have is that the deeper and more exacer...

According to an article put out by Reuters today, the former Fannie Mae CEO, Franklin Raines said, "Fannie Mae did not cause the current crisis." That's interesting, then why did the government have to put your company into conservatorship and put the tax payers on the hook for the trillions of d...

The National Association of REALTORS published their pending home sales index today.  The index is the leading indicator of next month's (November) exisitng home sales data.  For the life of me I still don't understand why they use the process that they use to calculate this index.  From their we...

According to an article published today by Reuters, loan modifications are not the answer - this is something that doesn't surprise me. The article goes on to say: "The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way, said John Dugan, head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller...

For the record, I am not advocate of the latest proposal for the government to set mortgages rates to 4.5%.  Namely because it won't have the significant results everybody is hoping that it will and it could be incredibly expensive - not a great combination.  Clearly, I would rather have a 4.5% m...

Thank you Tami Luhby, the CNNMoney.com Senior Writer recently wrote one of the finest and most accurate articles that I have read in the past year that addresses the current housing crisis and the proposed failed solutions. Here is the link to her recent article, "Lower mortgage rates no silver b...

With all of the talk lately about "taking the depression off the table", it got me thinking, what exactly is the difference between a "great" recession and a depression - and why does there seem to be so much optimism despite very negative economic data? Now, I do realize that we are not going to...

For quite a while CNBC's Jim Cramer has been calling a housing market "bottom" for June 30 of 2009, but after Bernanke's speech yesterday (as well as Credit Suisse's revised foreclosure estimates) I think Cramer may need to revisit his proclamation. Here is what Bernanke had to say yesterday, "As...

Yes, I know I will get some negative feedback about this post, but I do want to make it clear that I am NOTa proponent of having millions of Americans lose theirhomes, I simply think there is a more cost effective and long term solution to keeping people in their homes. First, what lenders are do...

Yes, I know I will get some negative feedback about this post, but I do want to make it clear that I am NOTa proponent of having millions of Americans lose theirhomes, I simply think there is a more cost effective and long term solution to keeping people in their homes. First, what lenders are do...