by Mario Rizzo
Investors’ eagerness to invest in mortgage debt helped drive mortgage rates to all-time lows this week, Freddie Mac said.
The average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages was 4.78%, the agency said Wednesday, matching a record low set in April. That was down from 4.83% from the previous week and 5.97% a year ago
I am amazed that aggregate-demand economists can look at the housing market and simply wonder how to bring it back to normalcy. Today the Wall Street Journal reports that investors are flocking to invest in mortgage-backed securities now that the Fed has been buying them. Freddie and Fannie are too big to fail, and so forth. The risk premium relative to Treasuries has fallen to the narrowest point this year.
From the investor’s perspective these are relatively safe problem-free investments. On the other hand, from the social perspective these investments delay the necessary adjustment of resources out of housing — remember: the over-expanded bubble sector?
Our aggregate-demanders (aka “Keynesians”) do not need to worry because during recessions the allocation of resources is not important. All that matters is propping up spending and restoring “confidence” in something called “the economy.”
UPDATE: A New York Times editorial argues that the housing stimulus is not working. What is their standard of “working”? It is hard to tell precisely. The complaints are that new housing construction has fallen, prices of houses are expected to fall still further and that more homeowners have negative equity. So presumably a policy that “worked” would have increased housing construction, propped up prices, and prevented the spread of negative equity. No readjustment in their play book! What is more disturbing, but predictable, is that the drumbeat for reconsidering the Fed’s plan to begin exiting the housing market has begun:
And the Federal Reserve, whose interventions have sustained the housing market over the past year, must show flexibility. The Fed has made it clear that it would prefer to begin withdrawing support for the market in the months ahead. But without other strong and successful fiscal measures in place, that could do more harm than good.
Stay tuned.