Everyone seems to have an opinion (me included) on the "Hard Landing or Soft Landing" topic. Throughout history the Fed has not been very good at engineering a soft landing. If anything, they have been notorious for raising rates too much. What bothers me is the most is you are not hearing many economists calling for a hard landing.

We still have not resolved the current debacle in real estate, and today's news of news of existing home sales (+4.5%) came unexpectedly. Looking beyond the numbers, buying incentives and lower long term rates helped move a portion of the massive build up in inventory.

Anyone who has dealt in the real estate markets can tell you that real estate moves in steps. This includes the downside as well as the upside. Homebuilders actually had to give up some profits to move inventory, so unless I am way off base, prices of existing homes will continue to fall in the coming months. The current supply of homes on the market is now at 6.6 months.