NEW YORK, N.Y. --- Yale Economic Review recently emailed a preview of its Winter 2008 volume that cites an article slugged, Greenspan 'made a mess' and U.S. Risks Recession - Renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz says Greenspan couldn't keep his house(- ing market) clean...

YER's link doesn't work, but I found a Nov. 17 Bloomberg News report at ChicagoTribune.com that catches the gist of the Nobel-winning former World Bank senior VP and chief economist-turned-Columbia University professor's brief on the matter:

"I'm very pessimistic," Stiglitz said in an interview Friday. "Alan Greenspan really made a mess of all this. He pushed out too much liquidity at the wrong time. He supported the tax cut in 2001, which is the beginning of these problems. He encouraged people to take out variable-rate mortgages."

Stiglitz warned of a 50 percent chance of a recession in the U.S. and predicted that growth in 2008 will certainly slow to less than half of its three percent potential.

Greenspan responded:

The U.S. home-price surge resulted mainly from the "dramatic" drop in rates on long-term fixed-rate mortgages, which itself resulted from the broader decline in long-term interest rates, Greenspan said. More than two dozen countries have experienced similar price surges and drops in long-term rates, Greenspan said. "The forces driving the boom are clearly global in nature," he said.

When the Fed held its main rate at 1 percent for a year starting in June 2003, the money supply expanded 5 percent, "scarcely the tinder for a housing boom," said the former Fed chairman, who served from 1987 to 2006.

Greenspan added that his 2001 tax-cut support was "contingent" on corresponding spending reductions and that he clarified his comment on variable-rate mortgages in remarks to the Economic Club of New York in March 2004. At that event, he said he meant to suggest that a "narrow segment" of customers might want an alternative to long-term mortgages.

Greer joined Carlisle Development Group in 2004 as an analyst. He was promoted to chief operating officer in 2005 when Carlisle, reporting developments throughout Florida totaling more than 6,000 residential units and more $500 million in total development costs, was named Affordable Multi-Family Developer of the Year by the Latin Builders Assn.

Affordable Housing Finance magazine ranked Carlisle the nation's sixth most active developer of affordable housing last year and the most active Florida developer---in May, 2007, Carlisle reported it started construction of nine affordable housing projects in 2006 and planned to start 22 projects in 2007, with 3,345 multi-family housing units 'in the pipeline.'

Carlisle opened in 1998.

Greer graduated from Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove in 1996. He earned a B.A. Degree in History from Columbia College in 2000 and an M.A. Degree in Real Estate from Columbia University in New York in 2003.

Greer lives in Miami Beach and is active in the Hold the Line campaign to protect Miami-Dade County's natural habitats from development, the Young Presidents Organization, the United Way's Young Leaders Group, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, and Our Kids of Miami-Dade/Monroe.

He may even propose a new tax on legal paperwork---a local 'Sadowski Act'---to help low- to moderate-income residents afford a house, reports Cindy Swirko at Gainesville.com.

Alachua Co. will receive about $1.2 million in SHIP funds this year---about 1/3 the amount due the county before Republican-led Fla. legislators pillaged the Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Gainesville will get $974,902, less than half the $2.3 million full Sadowski funding would have permitted.

"The actual scope is a broad one because there is a housing need not only for first-time homebuyers, but homebuyers in general. At the same time, as much as I like to promote home ownership, there is still a need for decent affordable rental housing. There is also becoming a need now for our elderly," Long said. "We will have a housing symposium to discuss the vision for the county here and how we see it. We will have a forum to decide what the needs are and if we are to create such a program, what types of housing programs should we actually target."

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, has achieved the mark of cult status among poohbahs: his own anti-blog, Lawrenceyunwatch.

Yun, who joined NAR eight years ago, earns his keep finding supporting data rosy enough for yesterday's NAR news release:

Existing-home sales are projected to trend up in 2008, with pending home sales showing a slight near-term rise, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of Realtors®.  However, a recovery for new-home sales is unlikely before 2009.

Lawrence Yun, [left,] NAR chief economist, said the worst part of the credit crunch has already worked its way through the data.  "The unusual mortgage disruptions that peaked in August were clearly seen in lower home sales that were finalized in September and October, so the market was underperforming," he said.  "Now that mortgage conditions have improved, some postponed activity should turn up in existing-home sales over the next couple of months, and I expect sales at fairly stable to slightly higher levels."

Complete text of the news release below...

Larry Hannan at NaplesNews.com reported on the laundry list of local funding priorities community leaders presented.

Coletta also asked the legislators to stabilize home insurance premiums, create more affordable housing by removing the cap on the Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust fund...

To which we can only add, "dammit!"

The housing industry is collapsing, real estate value is imploding and threatening to suck the entire U.S. economy into its black hole. One way to avoid recession---or worse---is to reverse the trend and re-establish Fla. as an affordable place to live, work and play.

The sooner home builders understand this the quicker we will solve our dangerous dilemma.

For starters, the district would donate 4 acres near Marlowe Elementary in New Port Richey to secure the state housing grant. There was no talk of down payment assistance - a major obstacle for those trying to buy their first house.

Under Fiorentino's proposal, employees would buy the house, while the district retained ownership of the land. For some employees, that sounds too much like living in a company town or worse - public housing. That is not Fiorentino's intention, but that really doesn't matter.

Skerritt has a problem:

It begs the question: How about paying teachers and school employees enough so they wouldn't have to qualify for such welfare?

We have a problem too. Four acres? Fifty houses? Would that be the tallest building in Pasco Co.?