Earlier this week, I wrote about an investor named Michael Burry that has actually bet 1.6 billion dollars that the stock market is going to crash.  He made all the right moves in 2008, and he fully intends to be proven right once again in 2023.  Of course current conditions definitely resemble 2008 in so many ways.  The residential housing market is so dead right now, and commercial real estate prices are plummeting at a very frightening pace.  Unfortunately, officials at the Federal Reserve are making it quite clear that they are not done strangling the economy.

This week, mortgage rates jumped above the 7 percent mark to the highest level that we have seen in more than 20 years…

Mortgage rates surpassed 7% this week, hitting the highest level in more than two decades.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 7.09% this week, up from 6.96% the week prior, according to Freddie Mac's release on Thursday. That's the highest point since the first week of April 2002 and marks just the third time rates have exceeded 7% since then. The last times were in October and November of last year, when the rate reached 7.08%.

Needless to say, high mortgage rates have been crippling the housing market in recent months.

At the midpoint of this year, existing home sales were down a whopping 18.9 percent from the same time in 2022…

Total existing-home sales1 – completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – receded 3.3% from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.16 million in June. Year-over-year, sales fell 18.9% (down from 5.13 million in June 2022).