Seven years after the peak of the housing crisis, CoreLogic reports that 10.2% of American homes still have mortgage balances above the property’s fair market value. Crazy.
Speaking of crazy, Greek officials today confirm that their country has no way to make their lump sum debt payments that are due June 30th without some sort of “loan modification” plan, or by taking on additional debt. Just last week their President assured the world that they could get caught up on their payments by the end of June. The latest excuse seems to be that because the citizens of Greece don’t work during the summer months, there are no tax revenues to pay the bills. EU officials are threatening to kick them out of the Union. The conversation was something like “if you are going to live in our house you need to live by our rules”. And then Greece was like “what are you talking about, all of Europe vacations during the summer”. Since I don’t speak German, or Greek, the translation could be a little rough.
As for the FOMC meeting that concludes today: with the most recent reading of our U.S. GDP at -0.7%, the likelihood of the Fed raising rates today is pretty slim…pretty slim indeed.
