Is the government creating another subprime-mortgage bubble?

Now that the subprime, low-income crowd has taken their lashings, there’s a new Great Recession victim — the faux rich.

Two years ago, I talked to a Canadian bank and they swore to me that the subprime crisis which was surfacing in the U.S. at the time wouldn’t touch them. The bank’s shares have since fallen 40 percent. You can run but you can’t hide.

High yields don’t always mean high value, says Matthew Collins. Some Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) now yield an attractive 16%. But commercial real estate is in a perilous position right now. And Matthew says investors should resist the temptation to go bottom fishing just yet. Later in the year, there could be some great opportunities to cash in on a recovery bounce.

Recently I took my girlfriend’s son to buy a large screen, flat panel TV so he could play his computer games with life size characters. The deal was if he saved half of the cost his mother and I would make up the other half. If you’re new to this computer game thing, it’s visual crack for these kids.

Off we went to the store where he had scouted out the best price on the unit he wanted. Wow, these things are expensive. As he stared in wonder at this digital behemoth, the sales person dutifully came up to close the deal.

As is always the case, numbers started flying back and forth between the sales person and myself; cables, warranties, delivery…

A bad year…and 2009 doesn’t look much better…the worldwide financial crunch is affecting everyone… 2008 will go down as the worst year for investors of all time…who needs Smoot or Hawley? Friedman has let us down…Keynesianism causes more problems than it solves…and more!

“Nothing like this has ever been done before by the Federal Reserve,” says Bud Conrad. From holding mostly US treasury notes and gold, the Fed’s balance sheet has been expanded by a whole range of questionable assets and liabilities. In time, Bud says the consequences for the US dollar will be grim.

Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), the mortgage giants taken over by the federal government back in September, will lower monthly payments for hundreds of thousands of struggling U.S. homeowners as part of a plan to accelerate anti-foreclosure efforts, federal officials announced yesterday (Tuesday).

It’s becoming clear that subprime lending wasn’t limited to the housing market. Companies in the auto-loan business are battling hard to keep their heads above water. Andrew Snyder says small firms like AmeriCredit (NYSE:ACF), United PanAm (NASDAQ:UPFC) and Consumer Portfolio Services (NASDAQ:CPSS) will struggle to survive.

New home sales rose by 2.7% in September, according to the Commerce Department. Andrew Snyder says this is an important sign of a rebound in the property market. And that means adjusting your portfolio to include real estate investment trusts (REITs) like Post Properties (NYSE:PPS) and American Campus Associates (NYSE:ACC).