A Truly-Less-Than "Super" Committee - Jeff Thredgold/Tea Leaf (11/22/11)

Portions of the supercommittee statement of failure…

“After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.”

Who's at Fault, Really? - Howard Voyles / HousingMatrix.com

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has it right when he recently said, “It was not the banks that caused the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress, who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. …They were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will.”

Join the conversation with economist Rodney Johnson, president of HS Dent and host Howard Voyles, CEO of HousingMatrix.com. Understand the Forces Shaping the Economy & the Housing Market – Make Informed Decisions. The most informative 20 minutes you will spend this week. Click here to listen

Don't Look Behind the Employment Curtain - Rodney Johnson/HSDent (11/21/11)

As I have discussed too many times, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) continues to fudge the jobs numbers by including the Birth/Death Adjustment, which is a measure of how many jobs are added to or taken away from the economy by small companies either starting up (births) or shutting down (deaths). Amazingly, the BLS almost always assumes that this is a positive number, so that miraculously there are lots of new jobs created by small businesses…even when there isn’t.