When Wall Street Buys Main Street

“America’s housing affordability crisis has a number of origins, but it largely stems from two key factors that you learned in Econ 101: supply and demand. The supply of homes on the market is extraordinarily low, as sellers hang onto their houses, waiting on the sidelines out of fear that historically high mortgage rates will make their next place to live too expensive. Demand exploded during the pandemic and it never slowed down, despite high prices and rates.” Kamala Harris is releasing her economic plan in North Carolina today, and addressing this issue will be on the list. Harris has a plan to fix one of America’s biggest economic problems. One of the key issues is that new homes are being bought up by investors instead of new homeowners. “Institutional investors could own 40% of single-family homes by 2030, according to one estimate.” QZ: Kamala Harris wants to stop Wall Street’s homebuying spree. Harris also plans to go after corporate price gouging. As the NYT (Gift Article) explains, high grocery prices are about more than this one issue. But people noticed that when inflation was at its worst, corporate profits were near their highest. I covered that in realtime: Wolfing on Wall Street. “As many Americans are struggling to keep up with food bills, food companies are gorging on gluttonous profits.”

+ It will be interesting to watch the media go into deep analytical mode as they assess each detail of the Harris economic plan—in comparison to how they do nothing of the sort for Trump’s “plans.” In fairness, Trump spent his economic address denigrating veterans. “Former President Donald Trump on Thursday said the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which honors civilians, ‘is actually much better’ than the Medal of Honor, because service members who receive the nation’s highest military decoration are often wounded or awarded it posthumously.”