HOUSING UPDATE….So who’s the most disgruntled by George Bush’s new plan to address the subprime mortgage fiasco? Borrowers and consumer advocates, who say the plan is too stingy and shuts out low-income victims? Or careful consumers, who are pissed off that while they scrimped and saved, the folks who used their homes as ATM machines are going to get bailed out? Oddly enough, it’s beginning to look like this plan has the potential to create an enormous amount of ill-will among almost everyone.
In other housing news, the rate of foreclosures hit another record last quarter, and Toll Brothers took a $200 million writedown on the value of its land and announced that new home sales declined 34%. Ugh.
