Recession? In 1980, (the biggest drop year) the interest rates were very high and buying a house was damn near impossible for ordinary folks. Now, they're low and people aren't buying. So, we're going to have a lot of construction workers out of work, people who produce the materials for construction, people who merchandise the materials, people who transport the materials, etc. Which means that all those people won't buying things, which means that the people who produce, merchandise, transport, etc, will lose their jobs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080117/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/economy_156;_ylt=AlhhCOcIoVj5zfuGDSIO0PsE1vAIWASHINGTON - The prolonged slump in housing pushed construction of new homes in 2007 down by the largest amount in 27 years with the expectation that the downturn has further to go.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that construction was started on 1.353 million new homes and apartments last year, down 24.8 percent from 2006. It was the second biggest annual decline on record, exceeded only by a 26 percent plunge in 1980, a period when the Federal Reserve was pushing interest rates to post-World War II records in an effort to combat an entrenched inflation problem.
Many economists believe that the current slump in housing will rival the dive in the late 1970s and early 1980s when housing construction fell for four straight years before beginning to recover after the severe 1981-82 recession. For December, construction fell by a bigger-than-expected 14.2 percent.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
