Stacy McCain asks “is this the hope, or the change?” He’s referring to the news from the Wall Street Journal that housing prices continued their 57-month decline in the first quarter of this year.
Home values posted the largest decline in the first quarter since late 2008, prompting many economists to push back their estimates of when the housing market will hit a bottom.
Home values fell 3% in the first quarter from the previous quarter and 1.1% in March from the previous month, pushed down by an abundance of foreclosed homeson the market, according to data to be released Monday by real-estate website Zillow.com. Prices have now fallen for 57 consecutive months, according to Zillow.
Last year, the housing market showed signs of improving as price depreciation slowed in some markets and stabilized in others. In response, a number of economists began forecasting that housing would hit a bottom in late 2011, then begin to recover. But the improvements, spurred by federal programs that gave buyers up to $8,000 in tax credits, proved fleeting. Sales collapsed when the credits expired last summer, and prices in many markets have been falling ever since.
With great news like this, Democrats think it’s a great time to raise taxes on oil companies. When are they going to learn? Taxes on those “greedy profit-seeking corporations” are taxes on us.
Not surprisingly, Paul Krugman of the New York Times still wants to lay the blame at the feet of -you guessed it- George W. Bush. Sheesh. Give it a rest already.
