The gift that keeps on giving...

Good news on the sub prime mortgage front. We are about to be rescued by "old Europe" you do remember "old Europe"? That was the crowd that Rummy denigrated for not choosing to follow us headlong into glorious conflict in Iraq. They lost their chance to be showered with flowers by the grateful Iraqi people. But it seems that they are about to make amends for that failure in post WWII gratitude by descending on our floundering housing market lugging large sacks of euros and overcome with a desire to become first time home owners in the US.

The theory goes that these well off European home purchasers will stimulate the current comatose first home market thereby allowing American sellers to move on to bigger and better homes. If we assume that this idea didn't originate with the aluminum foil hat wearing crowd, and that's a big assumption, is it possible that an influx of euros being used to buy homes in America by well off Europeans could actually affect this market to any appreciable extent?

According to one broker, he has already received 5 to 10 times as many requests for information about homes from interested Europeans as he did last year. Could this mean that there are at least 20 or 30 rich Europeans looking to invest in American property? Even if it were a few hundred buyers it seems unlikely that salvation is imminent.

The American banking and financial industry started this fiasco with the full consent of the current administration and congress and we are going to have to work through the results of this greed driven mess that has resulted from a confluence of Wall Street money grubbing and idiotic economic decisions.