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During this campaign year, you’ve heard about politicians referring to our country as a welfare state, heavy with unaffordable entitlements for seniors that are stalling our economic growth.  Our growing welfare state is slated to cost $10.3 trillion over the next 10 years-that’s $72,000 a household, said Mitt Romney to voters in Bedford, N.H., on […]

People who don’t follow the capital markets on a continuing basis might be forgiven for thinking that LIBOR was the name of a fitness instructor from Norway. But no, it’s actually what a lot of people in the business world, including those of us in real estate, look to benchmark the interest rates that we […]

80,000 was the number. 200,000 is what we need for this to feel like a recovery. And 8.2 is the number that keeps hanging on.  The nation’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2% (that’s 13 million unemployed workers) for the second consecutive month, the Labor Department said Friday.  Businesses added just 84,000 jobs, while governments […]

For a man who once said, “I’d rather be dead than singing Satisfaction when I’m forty-five”, the  50th birthday of the Rolling Stones must come as a surprise. That’s right the British Invasion’s most enduring act celebrates its golden anniversary July 12, 2012.  Founded in London in 1962 by Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, […]

Climate change isn’t new. A recent study found that it destroyed an ancient civilization approximately 4,000 years ago. The gradual eastward movement of monsoons across Asia at first supported the formation of the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley by allowing large-scale agricultural production, then wiped out the civilization as water supplies disappeared.  This the initial […]

Wobbly economies that shook up markets in 2011 took their toll on the world’s rich, though fast-growing Asia for the first time had more millionaires than North America.  According to the report, the global personal wealth of people worth $1 million declined in 2011 for the second time in four years, a side effect of […]

International lenders and Greece will renegotiate the program on which the second financial bailout for Athens is based because the original has become outdated, according to a senior Eurozone official.  Greece received a €130-billion bailout in February from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  General elections in May and June delayed the […]

The percentage of borrowers who are behind on making mortgage payments fell to a four-year low in the first three months of 2012, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).  The percentage of loans that were delinquent or in the foreclosure process during the 1st quarter was 11.33 percent, the lowest level since 2008.  That […]

Soaring gas prices lured Americans out of their cars and onto public transportation, adding up to a five percent increase in ridership in the first three months of 2012, the most significant 1st quarter increase since 1999.  According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA),  Americans took almost 125 million more rides on public transit […]

Home prices — including distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales), climbed 1.1 percent in April, according to a new report from CoreLogic.  If you don’t count distressed sales, prices rose 2.6 percent.  Prices have not risen for two consecutive months since June 2010, a time when the homebuyer tax credit was still available. Although the […]