Does the Weak Housing Market Signal a Coming Recession? - WSJ's Take On the Week
Then after the break, Gunjan sits down with Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, to discuss housing. First, they dive into the state of the housing market and why Dutta believes it is in a recession. Later, Gunjan asks the important question: 'Can the housing market be in a recession without the entire economy falling into a recession?'
This is WSJ's Take On the Week where co-hosts Gunjan Banerji, lead writer for Live Markets, and Telis Demos, Heard on the Street's banking and money columnist, cut through the noise and dive into markets, the economy and finance—the big trades, key players and business news ahead.
Have an idea for a future guest or episode? How can we better help you take on the week? We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at takeontheweek@wsj.com.
To watch the video version of this episode, visit our WSJ Podcasts YouTube channel or the video page of WSJ.com
Further Reading
A New Generation of 'Buy the Dip' Investors Is Propping Up the Market
Home Prices Hit Record High in June, Dragging Down Sales
Pending Home Sales Fell Unexpectedly in June
Housing Starts Gain but Still Lag From Last Year
For more coverage of the markets and your investments, head to WSJ.com, WSJ's Heard on The Street Column, and WSJ's Live Markets blog.
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Follow Gunjan Banerji here and Telis Demos here.
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a minute ago
- Yahoo
What Americans Said About Money In 1994 Still Rings Alarm Bells For Today's Crisis
Thirty years before today's financial influencers started preaching about emergency funds and investment basics on TikTok, ordinary Americans were already sounding the alarm about the nation's broken relationship with money. A revealing street interview from 1994, captured by documentary filmmaker David Hoffman on his YouTube channel, shows that the financial challenges plaguing Americans today have deeper roots than many realize. The Great Spending Hangover In 1994, Americans were experiencing what experts called a 'major transition' from the 1980s' culture of excess. The previous decade had been characterized as a 'decade of spending,' where people routinely spent more than they saved, riding high on what were described as 'terrific' market returns that weren't expected to continue. Don't Miss: Would You Have Invested in eBay or Uber Early? The Same Backers Are Betting on Named a TIME Best Invention and Backed by 5,000+ Users, Kara's Air-to-Water Pod Cuts Plastic and Costs — 'The 1990s are turning out to be a savings decade,' one expert observed, noting that Americans were finally beginning to save 'a significant portion of their income'—something they 'hadn't followed before.' This shift was seen as the beginning of a 'long term savings boom.' Sound familiar? Today's Americans are grappling with similar realizations about overspending, just with different triggers—pandemic-induced financial stress, inflation, and economic uncertainty rather than the end of an 80s bull market. America's Savings Rate: A Global Embarrassment The numbers from 1994 paint a stark picture that resonates today. The U.S. maintained a 'very low savings rate' of around 4%—described as 'abysmally low' compared with international peers. Swedish citizens kept one year's income in the bank, Canadians managed three months of expenses, Japan saved 25%-30% of income and China saved in the mid-30s. Financial experts criticized Americans as 'sloppy and lazy' with their spending, advocating for savings rates between 10%-20% annually. The diagnosis was brutal but accurate: Americans 'lived beyond their means.' Trending: 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. You can Fast forward to today, and the U.S. personal savings rate has fluctuated dramatically—spiking during the pandemic but generally remaining well below the levels financial advisors recommend for long-term stability. Retirement Reality Check: Then and Now Perhaps most prescient were 1994 Americans' concerns about retirement funding. They recognized that Social Security would 'not be enough' to support their desired lifestyle and understood they would 'have to have enough invested on their own' to retire comfortably. This realization drove increased interest in 401(k)s and IRAs as 'crucial investment vehicles for retirement'—a trend that has only intensified as traditional pension plans have largely disappeared and Social Security's long-term viability remains questionable. Timeless Investment Wisdom The investment advice shared in 1994 reads like a modern financial planning handbook. Americans understood that diversification was key to 'limiting risks' and should span different asset classes. They recognized that for long-term goals spanning 10, 15, 20, or 30 years, there was 'very little risk in stocks' because market 'dips will even out' and could represent buying opportunities. Most importantly, they grasped that trying to 'figure out the highs and the lows' of the market was 'virtually impossible'—a lesson many retail investors are still learning today amid meme stock frenzies and crypto Behavioral Trap That Never Changed Perhaps the most striking insight was the observation that people typically do the 'opposite' of what they should: buying more when prices rise (lower potential returns) and hesitating when prices fall (higher potential returns). This counter-intuitive behavior pattern remains one of the biggest obstacles to successful investing three decades later. The 1994 interviews reveal that while investment vehicles and technology have evolved dramatically, the fundamental challenges of saving, planning, and smart investing remain remarkably consistent. The Americans who recognized these truths 30 years ago were ahead of their time—and their insights remain more relevant than ever. Read Next: These five entrepreneurs are worth $223 billion – Image: Imagn Images Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article What Americans Said About Money In 1994 Still Rings Alarm Bells For Today's Crisis originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Fox News
26 minutes ago
- Fox News
Ex-Washington Post fact checker hits ‘absentee owner' Bezos, tells him to commit to saving paper or sell it
The Washington Post is a sinking ship with a captain missing in action. And according to its now-former fact-checker, that missing captain is its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. "He has to be committed to it. If he's not committed to it, he should find someone else to own it," Glenn Kessler told Fox News Digital. "I feel like he was kind of committed to it. And then he's kind of an absentee owner, and he shouldn't be because it's, you know, one of the prime assets of American journalism." Kessler left the Post in July after more than 27 years at the paper — and his final years there were not the best. "What's so saddening is that five years ago, I would not have imagined The Washington Post would be in this state," Kessler said. Kessler never considered leaving the Post until he was presented with the buyout offer, which he accepted. The Post has been financially bleeding, so much so that it reportedly was on pace to lose at least $77 million in 2024. The buyouts had targeted the most veteran staffers, aiming to cut costs and ward off layoffs for the time being. The famed fact-checker was among several high-profile journalists and columnists who have left the paper in recent months, many of whom took issue with decisions and editorial changes Bezos himself had ordered. Kessler compared the Post to "being on the Titanic after it struck an iceberg — drifting aimlessly as it sank, with not enough lifeboats for everyone" in a piece he wrote on his newly-launched Substack account. "They have to have a vision of where they want to go. And I've not seen that vision yet. Or if there is a vision, it's not been clearly articulated," Kessler said. "It's gonna be a really rocky period in the news business in the next five to ten years. And the Post needs to be prepared for that. And I kind of feel like they've lost a lot of, you know, important sailors and captains to keep the ship going. So they're gonna have to make do with less." Bezos has been the target of intense blowback by liberals, who've accused him of bending the knee to President Donald Trump based on actions that have rocked the paper. First was his decision in October to halt the planned endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the presidential election. Then, in February, he launched a new mission for the editorial pages to promote "personal liberties and free markets," vowing to not publish any pieces that go against those principles. Both instances sparked rebellion among the paper's liberal readers, leading to the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of subscriptions. Several staffers also resigned in protest. But Kessler wasn't always a Bezos critic. He credited the Amazon founder for saving the Post when he bought it in 2013. "Before Bezos bought the newspaper, it was in really bad shape," he told Fox News Digital. "People forget how, you know, because the Graham family didn't really have the resources to keep it going in the new era. And there had been a bunch of buyouts and people were asked to leave. So it had been a pretty grim period then." Things at the Post were souring so much so that Kessler himself had been interviewing for a different job outside the paper. That was until he was offered The Fact Checker stint in 2011, which he accepted, thinking that if the ship went down, he himself could stay afloat with his own "brand." "But then Bezos bought the paper, and he invested a lot of money in the paper," Kessler said. "So the size of the staff doubled. The number of foreign bureaus probably went up [by] at least a third. The resources devoted to engineering support surged, so the web pages started loading faster, and we could do fantastic graphics. There was investment in video… And you really felt like the Post was going places, and it was actually producing better journalism at any point in the time I had worked at the Post." "And now it is just… it's like it hit an iceberg, and it's kind of drifting there, and I don't think there's a plan to rescue it. Or at least a plan to, you know, turn the ship around and get it moving in the direction it was." Kessler blamed management for being "a little dazzled" by the traffic spike that came during the first Trump administration, reaching levels "almost equal" to the Post's top rival, The New York Times. But then, unlike the Times, the Post failed to capitalize on its new readers by not expanding its portfolio. "I've sat in many meetings and had many discussions and heard lots of speeches. I still have no idea what they're trying to do," Kessler said of his former bosses. "It vaguely seems to say we're gonna appeal [to] the people… who don't really care about the news. And we're gonna provide products that would allow them to read The Washington Post and find out information they need to know," he said. "And the problem, as I wrote in my piece, is that that's what The New York Times has been doing for ten years. They have 10 million subscribers, but a large chunk of that are people that don't get the core news product," Kessler continued. "They get the recipes, they get The Athletic — the sports section, they get product recommendations, they get the games, they play Wordle." He said the Post is stuck with "the Avis problem," citing the car rental company's old ads that claimed "We try harder," alluding to the reality it was always in the shadow of Hertz, a dynamic similar to the Gray Lady. "The Washington Post has always been No. 2. It's never had the same size circulation as the Times. I would argue news coverage was better, but maybe I was biased about that," Kessler conceded to Fox News Digital. 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When people use AI, a thousand searches result in one click," he continued. "So it's a dramatic difference. And if I were running a news organization, at this point, I don't know quite what I would do about that. So it's a bad time to be running a new organization. I do have sympathy for the situation that [Washington Post publisher and CEO] Will Lewis and [Washington Post executive editor] Matt Murray find themselves in right now. I just question whether or not they really have figured out what to do." Goo said in her announcement that "we're going to be infusing AI with everything that we do to help us maximize efficiency and scale." But the buck ultimately stops with Bezos, according to Kessler. "The Post was really at its high point [after Bezos' purchase]— the amount of stories we're producing, the quality of the stories was really significant. And then, traffic surged when Trump got elected and there was so much hunger and interest in the news we were producing. We kind of lost our way after that," Kessler said. "And not only lost our way, we started losing oodles of money. A hundred million dollars one year, I think the last number I saw [in] 2023 was $77 million… I think even for a person as rich as Jeff Bezos, that counts as real money." "And I have gotten the sense that he's a bit of an absentee owner. He's had other distractions, and he's committed more to some of his other enterprises, such as a space company, than he is to The Washington Post, which is really just a tiny part of his business investments. And maybe, I don't know, I hate to speculate, maybe you thought he gave us his best shot, and we blew it, and now we've got it muddled through," he added. A spokesperson for The Washington Post told Fox News Digital, "The Washington Post is reinventing itself to be a trusted news source for all Americans. That means working hard each day to publish the most accurate news, alongside opinions that resonate across the nation."
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'The risk that's on our doorstep': July inflation data has economists on edge
Markets ended the week largely unfazed by a hotter wholesale inflation print and signs of firming consumer prices, but some economists warn the underlying story is more concerning than investors seem to believe. The Producer Price Index (PPI) for July surged to a three-year high, with services inflation playing a key role in the gains. A similar trend appeared in the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report earlier this week as firming prices in services like dental care and airline fares marked a surprise reversal from the prior softening that had been offsetting higher goods prices from tariffs. The fresh data now puts the Federal Reserve, which targets 2% inflation, in a precarious position as tensions between its dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment begin to surface. Massive downward revisions in July's jobs report last week fueled concerns that the labor market is softening too quickly, strengthening the case for rate cuts. But the hotter-than-anticipated inflation data could suggest the need for more restraint. As of Friday afternoon, markets continued to price in about an 85% probability that the central bank will cut rates in September, according to the latest CME FedWatch Tool. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's Jackson Hole speech next week could give hints on the Fed's next policy move. The Fed's dual mandate tension Some economists argue the Fed should hold off on rate cuts — or even consider raising rates. "These are broad-based inflationary pressures," Lauren Saidel-Baker, economist at ITR Economics, told Yahoo Finance following this week's hotter-than-expected PPI print. "I see more reason for rates to be rising in order to not let inflation get away from us." Saidel-Baker noted these pressures have been building for years and aren't solely the result of tariffs. She pointed to higher wages and rising energy costs as key drivers now feeding into the data. She also stressed that the full impact of tariffs will take time to emerge. "Inflation is the risk that's on our doorstep, much more so than the labor market," Saidel-Baker emphasized. "Fed officials know that." Read more: How the Fed rate decision affects your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and investments Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee cautioned Wednesday that a continued rise in services prices, similar to what was seen in this week's CPI report, would be worrisome "Services are not tied to the tariffs," he said. "Everyone is hoping that's just a blip. There's noise in the data. If you start to get multiple months where the components suggest that the impact of tariff inflation is not staying in its lane, that would be more of a concern." At the same time, the latest numbers painted a mixed picture. Michael Gapen, chief US economist at Morgan Stanley, told Yahoo Finance earlier this week that the July CPI report offered "some good news and some bad news." "The good news here is that tariff impulse into inflation wasn't as high as anticipated this month," he said. "The bad news is that services inflation was pretty soft in prior months. And it did give the impression to many that, hey, maybe we could ignore tariff inflation because services weakness will offset it. But now, I think a lot of that's reversed." "I'm not ready to say, 'Oh, services is about ready to roar higher," he added, "[but] if it's firming, we do have to watch out." Gapen is still calling for no rate cuts this year, despite the market's near certainty that at least one is coming. "There's enough inflation momentum here that suggests inflation will continue to deviate from the Fed's mandate," he said. "Immigration controls are likely to keep the unemployment rate low. And that means a tight labor market." Read more: How jobs, inflation, and the Fed are all related Despite the recent downward revisions, the labor market has remained relatively strong, supporting consumers as spending patterns hold up. Still, cracks are emerging as payroll growth slows, job openings decline, and continuing claims, or the number of Americans receiving ongoing unemployment benefits, edge higher. Chris Watling, global economist and chief market strategist at Longview Economics, argued that while inflation might firm up over the next few months, the bigger story is the risk of a slowing economy. "The more important factor here is the employment and growth mandate [which] is why the market's focus is shifting,' he said. "The manufacturing sector has had no growth in three years. Housing is deteriorating. I think this is a really clear slowdown in this economy. And I'm amazed the Fed isn't getting on with it." Watling said he believes the Fed should begin easing in September and continue cutting through the end of the year, arguing that the slowdown in underlying growth will outweigh any near-term uptick in inflation. Allie Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
