The National Association of Realtors released its most current report on pending home sales; it was utterly dismal. April witnessed a contraction from March of 11 percent; year-on-year pending house purchases fell by 26.5 percent. It must be recalled that a year ago the U.S. housing market was already in feeble shape.
These numbers confirm that America’s residential housing market remains in pathetic condition. This massive share of U.S. economic activity, the faltering of which triggered the ongoing global financial and economic crisis, remains in pathetic condition. With no recovery in sight-and it must be recalled that housing is typically the leading edge of a real economic recovery from a deep recession, there is no clear path towards healthy economic metrics. This sobering statistic, in conjunction with other tepid economic indicators, including a weak employment market, highlights the fragility of the U.S. economy. At this point, it is only massive government deficits, projected at more than $1.6 trillion for the current fiscal year, that has prevented a continued massive contraction in overall economic performance in America. And, as I have pointed out before, massive public debt is no viable strategy for creating long-term sustainable economic growth.

Ground zero of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008, the collapse of the U.S. residential housing market, remains in critical condition. Despite trillions of dollars in public debt utilized as a backstop for the mortgage industry and gimmicks like tax credits for new home purchasers, the stream of date shows that the overarching trend in the United States is continuing home price deflation, as a rising proportion of outstanding mortgages are under water.
One recent survey indicates that in January of this year 27 percent of all American mortgages were under water (balance of mortgage exceeds market value of home),compared with 20 percent in August 2010. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index most recently has tracked downward movement on home sales, and prices in most parts of the United States continue to decline.
With a weak housing market in the U.S. seemingly immune to massive injections of borrowed public money, no wonder Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is printing money like a crazy man on LSD. His most recent bout of quantitative easing does not seem to have stimulated the domestic housing market at all, though it has pumped up the Dow Jones index to absurd ratios of price to earnings. However, as 2008 demonstrated the centrality of housing to the U.S. economy and not its hyperbolic stock market, the continuing weakness in this core sector does not bode well for a sustained recovery, both in America and throughout the global economy.

The American housing industry is once again in free fall. The latest figures, just released, indicate that in July existing home sales plunged by 27%, reflecting an annual pace of 3,830,000 home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors. This is a fifteen year low, which had only been temporarily delayed by the Obama administration’s deficit-financed home purchase tax credit, now expired.
These figures are a disaster for the American economy of such a staggering level, not even Timothy Geithner or Ben Bernanke can put a positive spin on it. The housing industry is the center of gravity for the entire American economy, and its earlier demise was what unleashed the current global economic crisis. The gloomy data now out on existing home sales is another flashing red light, warning not only of a double-dip recession, but even more ominously, a prolonged economic depression.
