the complete lunacy from the White House is starting to pile up.  

Home sales has dropped around 16%.

This is one more major sign  a start of a recession?

It would be interesting to hear one person from the left explain how the economy works, it is obvious they have NO clue!

theyare just useful idiots 

Economies are cyclic, unfortunately. House prices at record highs"? A correction, a reversal of that trend is to be expected. Not the first time in recent years that this has happened.

Yes, a contraction/recession is coming:

Note: The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the acknowledged arbiter of business-cycle dating, describes a recession as “the period between a peak of economic activity and its subsequent trough, or lowest point…involv[ing] a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.” An expansion is the period from a trough to its subsequent peak or highest point.

The Committee announced on June 8, 2020, that the economic expansion following the trough in June 2009 peaked in February 2020. On July 19, 2021, it announced that the trough of the ensuing recession was in April 2020. While the recession was very deep, it was the shortest on record at just two months. The committee noted that this recession “had different characteristics and dynamics than prior recessions” but nonetheless the unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the economy, warranted the designation of this episode as a recession, even though the downturn was briefer than earlier contractions. On a quarterly basis the NBER dated the previous peak as the fourth quarter of 2019 and the latest trough as the second quarter of 2020.

When President Trump took office in January 2017, he inherited an economy in its 91st month of economic expansion following the end of the Great Recession in June 2009. That expansion continued into 2020, becoming the longest on record but peaked at 128 months in February 2020. The current expansion, which began following the April 2020 trough, reached 24 months in April.

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While the post-Great Recession expansion was long, both the economy’s average annual growth rate and the typical worker’s earnings gains were relatively modest by the standards of earlier long expansions. Former President Trump claimed that his policies would produce a substantial and sustained increase in economic growth, and his Council of Economic Advisers claimed that those policies would boost wages and employment substantially. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and many other non-partisan analysts projected much slower economic growth and smaller increases in most workers’ earnings.

This chart book documents the 2009-2020 economic expansion and will continue to track the evolution of the economy. It supplants its predecessor, “The Legacy of the Great Recession,” which covers the decade from the start of the recession in December 2007 through December 2017 with a focus on the plunge into and recovery from the Great Recession.

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Housing prices are up dramatically ... so much so that first time home buyers are beginning to be "no more" ... It has been an inflated market not based in reality. Interest rates ARE up, they have to be, to curb inflation. That's what causes fewer starts.

Tell me you dont know these basic economic principles? 

We have a recession starting, but you don't see it.  All the economic indicators are out there.

open Your eyes and mind, Biden has not taken ONE correct step yet.

It's not my fault that you don't look at what's right in front of your face.

The entire world has high inflation ... It's not just us. Your ego or koolaid mind will not allow you to understand that it is NORMAL to go into a recession after a boom for so long. Stock market corrections are normal. Bear markets are normal. We had growth in the market that put the market P/E way above the average. Things correct. They are cycles. It's has ZERO to do with Biden's economic policy and everything to do with external factors. 

"Really" Yeah, really. I agree that an economic contraction is due, but Biden has nothing to do with it.

Presidents don't set economic cycle starts, ends, or events in between the two. They can, with their central bankers, affect how each national economy is affected by externals- like Covid, and especially energy prices.

The correction (contraction) is coming but when and how is macro, the world economy will be affected. Unlike the domestic housing market. I believe I heard that almost 40% of American asset value is real estate in one form or another. A couple points from that is a real hit.

 

 

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The data is clear: The pandemic housing boom—which has seen U.S. home prices soar 19.8% over the past year—is finally losing some steam.

 

What's going on? Soaring mortgage rates, which have climbed from 3.11% to 5.25% over the past five months, are leading to what economists call "demand destruction." It's easy to see why some would-be homebuyers are backing off. If a borrower took out a $500,000 mortgage at 3.11%, they'd owe $2,138 per month. The exact same mortgage at a 5.25% rate would have a $2,761 payment, or an additional $244,400 over the course of the 30-year loan.

But the housing boom isn't dead in the water just yet. At least according to Zillow's revised housing forecast.

While the forecast Zillow published this month is a downward revision from the one it published in April, it's still fairly bullish. Over the coming 12 months, the Seattle-based real estate firm predicts that U.S. home prices will climb 11.6%. That's down from its previous forecast of a 14.9% year-over-year rate, but it would still mark an appreciation level that is more than double the average rate (4.6%) posted since 1987.

It also marks the second consecutive downward revision: Back in March, Zillow was predicting home prices would spike 17.8% over the coming year.

"These downwardly revised projections would still represent a very strong housing market in the coming year. In the history of the Zillow Home Value Index, which dates back to 2000, annual growth has only exceeded the current year-ahead projection of 11.6% during this recent run of record-breaking growth, and during a several-month stretch in 2005," write the Zillow economists.

The reason for the downward revision? Zillow cites spiking mortgage rates, rising inventory, and slowing home sales.

That said, Zillow's forecast model remains bullish as a result of buyer demand. Through the rest of the year, it expects home sales to remain strong, ultimately hitting 5.7 million in 2022. While that would be down 6.4% from last year's 6.1 million homes sold—the highest since 2006—it would still represent an elevated demand for homes. For perspective, during the 2010 decade, annual home sales averaged 5 million flat.

When does Zillow think the housing boom will fizzle out?

"The housing market is expected to return to pre-pandemic, 2019 norms—at least in terms of inventory and the share of purchases made by first-time home buyers—by 2024," wrote Zillow researchers on Tuesday as they assessed their findings from their monthly poll of "housing market experts."

Not everyone agrees with Zilow's bullish outlook. Look no further than real-estate research firm CoreLogic. Over the coming 12 months, CoreLogic predicts that U.S. home prices will rise 5.9%. If CoreLogic's prediction comes to fruition, it would see a return to a historically normal rate of growth.

Also, Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi doesn't agree with Zillow's assessment. Zandi tells Fortune he expects U.S. home prices to be flat over the coming year, and could even fall 5% to 10% in America's most "overvalued" housing markets.

Another reason to be skeptical of Zillow's prediction: affordability.

Over the past two years, U.S. home prices have soared a staggering 34.4%. That far outpaces U.S. income growth during the same period. As a result, Moody's Analytics told Fortune last month that 96% of regional housing markets are now "overvalued" relative to local incomes. In a paper titled “Real-time market monitoring finds signs of brewing U.S. housing bubble," Dallas Fed researchers say that for the first-time since the ’00s housing bubble we're amid a housing market that has become detached from fundamentals.

If you’re hungry for more housing data, follow me on Twitter at @NewsLambert.

"open Your eyes and mind, Biden has not taken ONE correct step yet."

Biden has not put boots on the ground in Ukraine.

Biden is pushing for NATO support against Russian aggression in Ukraine. He is pushing the senate to approve that treaty.

The white feather:

Trump Brags He Threatened to Not Defend NATO Allies From Russia

Trump's remarks came during a keynote speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation's leadership conference at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Florida. In his comments, he touted his efforts to pressure NATO allies to increase their individual contributions to their military defense. In 2006, NATO members agreed to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense to ensure the alliance's military preparedness.

"Everyone was delinquent, they didn't pay," the former president told the crowd in Florida, according to a video from the Right Side Broadcasting Network. "And they asked me, one of the presidents of the countries at a closed meeting...he said, 'Does that mean that you won't protect us in case, if we don't pay, you won't protect us from Russia—was the Soviet Union but now Russia?'

"I said, 'That's exactly what it means,'" Trump said he responded. "Now, if I said, 'No, I don't mean that,' then why would they pay? So somebody had to say it. I was amazed it didn't get out. I was amazed. The fake news didn't pull it out."

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday evening at an event in Florida that he threatened to not defend NATO allies from Russia while he was president. Above, Trump speaks at a press conference on the second day of a NATO summit in Brussels on July 12, 2018.SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES

He added, "The money started to flow in."

NATO allies' spending on defense did increase during Trump's tenure as president. Some critics have pointed out, however, that this uptick came as the result of 2014 commitments. In 2014, three years before Trump took office and following Russia's annexation of Crimea, NATO members agreed they would meet by 2024 the 2 percent commitment to fund their own defense. But Trump did focus significant pressure on NATO allies to rapidly work to achieve that goal.

"President Trump has been very clear," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Fox News in 2019. "He is committed to NATO. He stated that clearly just a few days ago and also at the NATO summit in July. But at the same time, he has clearly stated that NATO allies need to invest more. And therefore at the summit in July last year we agreed to do more to step up―and now we see the results."

"By the end of next year, NATO allies will add...100 billion extra U.S. dollars toward defense. So we see some real money and some real results. And we see that the clear message from President Donald Trump is having an impact," Stoltenberg said.

In a July 2016 interview with The New York Times before being elected, Trump complained that NATO members didn't pay enough. Asked if he would defend the allied nations from Russia, he suggested this would depend on how much they were paying.

"If they fulfill their obligations to us," Trump said, "the answer is yes."

Under NATO's charter, Article 5 lays out the collective defense commitments of members, saying that an attack against any one of the 30 nations will be viewed as an attack against all. The article requires that all the member states collectively go to the defense of an ally under attack.

Trump's July 2016 remarks drew substantial backlash, as many critics contended he was working to undermine NATO. That allegation continued to be promoted by critics throughout his presidency as concern mounted over Trump's and his associates' ties to Moscow.

Newsweek reached out to NATO's press office for comment.

Trump's remarks Thursday about NATO came as Russia continues its internationally condemned invasion of Ukraine, which is not a NATO member but has been drawing closer to the alliance over the past couple of decades. Ukraine's constitution requires its government to seek full NATO membership.

Many European nations and Western analysts view Russia's assault on Ukraine as a threat to NATO states. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be satisfied with taking over his country, contending that Moscow will want to push further into Western Europe if Ukraine falls. NATO members have rapidly sent billions of dollars in weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since Putin launched the full-scale invasion just over two months ago, on February 24.