Economic Hard Times Getting Harder

Economics / Great Depression II
Aug 22, 2010 - 08:10 PM

By: Danny_Schechter

We know we live in hard times that are on the verge of getting harder with 500,000 new claims for unemployment last week, a recent record.

The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D-Word (depression) is back in play.

Foreclosures are up, and the Administration’s programs to stop them are down, well below their stated goals, only helping 1/6th of those promised assistance.

And here’s a statistic for you: 300,000. That’s the number of foreclosure filings every month for the past 17 months. This year, 1.9 million homes will be lost, down from 2 million last year. Is that progress? In July alone, 92, 858 homes were repossessed.

At the same time, the number of cancelled mortgage modifications exceeded the number of successful ones. According to Ml-implode.com, http://bankimplode.com/viewnews/2010-08 ... rhamp.html last month, “the number of trial modification cancellations surged to 616,839, greatly outnumbering the 421,804 active permanent modifications."

And don’t think this is only a problem that affects the homeowners about to go homeless. The New York Times quotes Michael Feder, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/busin ... using.html the chief executive of the real estate data firm Radar Logic to the effect that we are all at risk.

“My concern is that if we have another protracted housing dip, it’s going to bring the economy down,â€