Welcome to the Blogsphere....

Please give a warm welcome to Nikki from the Baltimore Metro Housing Blog

I see many a reader here from the D.C. and Baltimore areas... so if you haven't been to Nikki's place yet, head on over.

This is her very fine mission:

"A forum for the under-reported housing market conditions in the Baltimore Metro area (Baltimore City and the surrounding counties). The demise of the editorial Real Estate section in the local paper (and its subsequent absorption into the advertising section) has left our market with virtually no objective assessments...I'm trying to fill that gap so the MAR and NAR don't have the only say."

Here is a snippet of her work- latest post titled:

Will the Fed Wuss Out?

"I think it's safe to say that Americans are living far beyond their means, as is evidenced by our amazing consumer debt, our negative savings and a long period of (too) cheap money. My personal opinion is that interest rates need to keep climbing far beyond 5%, like up towards 8%, to help this economy back to equilibrium (although this will pretty much be impossible without real pain)."

"Janet Yellen, the CA fed governor, seems very worried about asset prices, which, if I'm not mistaken, is NOT the Fed's worry. If they stop raising rates now because of a (necessary) housing slowdown, then money will still be too cheap, and the ensuing fallout from our greed and overconsumption will be even father stretched out. The M3 is gone, so we have no clue about how much $ is being printed, energy prices continue to skyrocket (I just watched oil go from down $1.50 to up $0.10 in 20 minutes...) with no end in sight, and our deficit grows...but hey, inflation is contained, and everyone, here's lots of worthless US dollars!! Hey, it's a money party! Thanks Big Ben!"