How Rapidly Money Is Changing Hands
Readers suggested a topic on the economy. “The velocity of money, as measured by M2, just touched on a level last seen when I was a wee lad. Here is the graph posted a day or so back. One thing I recall about the period from 1966 through 1982 is that it was not exactly a joy ride for those US investors whose portfolios were loaded down with either long-term bonds or stocks. Should we care, and how should American households factor this information in their financial decisions?”
A reply, “Go to cash. The velocity of money is a measure of how rapidly money is changing hands. If money isn’t changing hands very rapidly then that is a sign that people are hanging on to what money they have rather than spending it. A consumer-based economy depends on consumers spending money. If consumers are not doing so then such an economy is hosed.”
Another said, “Possible alternate explanation: consumers are spending about like they usually do (see retail sales data), but banks are sitting on an unprecedented amount of cash in the form of reserves (which the Fed pumped into them). Big corps are sitting on lots of cash too. It might not be the consumer at all this time.”
One had this, “A somewhat speculative but reasonable presumption is that debt service is driving the velocity into the ground and once the debt is retired, velocity will accelerate rapidly. Not a forecast.”
And another, “Here’s my suspicion on why this is: No long term stability. The government itself is picking and choosing winners. The Supercommittee tax and spending cuts - are they real or will they be whittled away? What’s the tax situation going to be? What is the long term housing situation? What will the elections bring?”
“So, if lack of an ability to plan longer term exists, it may well be what is causing people to sit back and keep their powder dry. Also - state of the economy is uncertain. Recession? Recovery? I’m guessing after the election, the longer term outlook should become clearer. But, I’m looking to hire a a haruspex in any case.”
And finally, “I suspect that not too many people are keeping their powder dry. The majority of people I know are running just a little short on powder. A lot of people were borrowing to keep up over the past decade and now that is getting more difficult. The government is trying to take up the slack (borrowing) but isn’t quite. I think the velocity of M is down because we have passed Peak Credit. it is not going to come back in our lifetimes, JMO. This is fine for me, I have not been able to compete well with borrowers.”
The Springfield News Sun. “Owning a home once was a sure bet, an investment that would never lose value, said Michael Ford, founding director of Xavier’s Center for the Study of the American Dream. Owning a home once signaled that you ‘made it.’ In recent years, however, property values and home prices have dropped. The mandated update of property values in 2011 in Butler County, for example, resulted in a 4.3 percent average drop in residential property values and a total devaluation of about $250 million, according to the auditor’s office.”
“‘To talk about it as the American dream, I think people still want to own homes, but are reluctant after such a decline,’ said Ben Dunham, an agent for Henderson Land Investment Company in Urbana.”
“The people most affected are the homeowners who had the dream of their house appreciating in value and then upgrading, he said. ‘They’re not able to sell and do the upgrade. They did have the idea of upgrading and that’s not just going to happen in the current environment,’ Dunham said.”
“Owning a home once was a sure bet, an investment that would never lose value, said Michael Ford, founding director of Xavier’s Center for the Study of the American Dream.”
that was until wall street turned the housing market into a casino too.
“I think the velocity of M is down because we have passed Peak Credit. it is not going to come back in our lifetimes, JMO. This is fine for me, I have not been able to compete well with borrowers.”
Hear, hear!
“…have not been able to compete well with borrowers.”
Same goes for us… can’t complain much about the turning of the tables, despite the Fed’s best efforts to stimulate more borrowing.
I’m looking forward to people that, you know, make things and do stuff prospering.
RIP Paper Pushers
Credit is finite, everything has already been
collateralized, some many times over.
“Owning a home once was a sure bet, an investment that would never lose value, said Michael Ford, founding director of Xavier’s Center for the Study of the American Dream. Owning a home once signaled that you ‘made it.’ In recent years, however, property values and home prices have dropped.
Not ever true. Recall the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980’s?
How quickly people forget. Remember the Oil boom housing mania in Texas? Recall the FLORIDA Real-Estate Mania of the 1920’s?
There have been cycles, for various reasons, throughout history.
Think about the California Gold rush, or the Silver Mines around Denver.
BOOMTOWN mentalities led to escalating prices and irrational behavior.
This guy needs to find a real job that involves free market money changing, rather than a brain-dead “study center”. Somehow, I must believe there is some government Grant money to be siphoned off here.
Short memories are one of the hobgoblins of small minds.
Xavier’s Center for the Study of the American Dream
LOL
California real estate crashed in the early 1980’s and the early 1990’s.
Then we had the Pets.com fiasco of the early 21st century.
This was not “unexpected.”
“The people most affected are the homeowners who had the dream of their house appreciating in value and then upgrading, he said. ‘They’re not able to sell and do the upgrade. They did have the idea of upgrading and that’s not just going to happen in the current environment,’ Dunham said.”
That’s just wrong! The Fed should do something to make housing prices go up again, in order to flood underwater borrowers with money so the move-up market can find its legs again.
(Snark tags off…)
arent they trying?
why are we having so many bubbles in assets lately? Are these bubbles simply opportunities for wall street to fleece amercians? They have all the inside information as to when the money printing will be turned on and off?
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” thomas jefferson
Good sounding quote, though sadly, it’s a hoax.
However, Andrew Jackson really did call the Second Bank of the United States The Monster.
azdude, this is what I believe you were looking for.
Here’s a T.J. quote from a letter dated May 1816, as per the Library of Congress:
“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
Thomas Jefferson
nice bro
‘They’re not able to sell and do the upgrade. They did have the idea of upgrading and that’s not just going to happen in the current environment’…
I hate it when that happens.
“…arent they trying?”
24-7. How is that working out for them?
Edmonton, Alberta
Windchill 0 °C
Wind 9 km/h S
Relative humidity 51 %
Hard-hit U.S. housing market shows signs of resuscitation
By Gary Lamphier, Edmonton Journal
March 17, 2012
On the surface at least, the brutal crash in the U.S. housing market, which began six long years ago, shows few signs of abating.
But some industry players say early signs of a rebound are emerging, as U.S. housing inventories shrink and job growth picks up.
“We think we’re probably past the bottom now,” says Ralph Young, CEO of Edmonton-based Melcor Developments, which has roughly doubled its U.S. property holdings over the past year.
“How far we are past the bottom I’m not sure, but there are some pretty good signs in terms of the amount of housing inventory on the market. It has declined quite significantly.”
Still, the overall picture remains gloomy. As 2011 drew to a close, the most widely quoted gauge of U.S. home prices sank to its lowest level since the crisis began, with 18 of 20 major metro markets down last year.
All three of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices - including the national composite index and benchmarks that reflect prices in clusters of 10 and 20 key cities - declined again in 2011.
The seemingly endless retreat defied the upbeat predictions of everyone from legendary investor Warren Buffett to Mad Money loud-mouth Jim Cramer, both of whom called for a rebound in 2011.
Stoopid iz as stoopid sez…
“The housing market ended 2011 on a very disappointing note,” David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, said when he released the data in late February.
“While we thought we saw some signs of stabilization in the middle of 2011, neither the economy nor consumer confidence was strong enough to move the market in a positive direction.”
Following a 3.8 per cent decline in the fourth quarter, the S&P/Case-Shiller national house price index was mired almost 34 per cent below its mid-2006 peak.
“The pickup in the economy has simply not been strong enough to keep home prices stabilized. If anything it looks like we might have re-entered a period of decline as we begin 2012,” Blitzer said.
Ironically, a recent $25-billion US settlement between U.S. banks and all 50 state attorneys general over abusive foreclosure practices is expected to trigger yet another wave of home seizures.
Some five million U.S. homes have already been foreclosed since 2006, and one million more distressed properties are expected to hit the market this year.
And yet, despite the gloomy statistics, the mood is slowly brightening. Inventories are shrinking and sales volumes are accelerating, propelled in part by a huge wave of Canadian buyers.
…
Happy daze are hear agin!
I need some home equity so I can buy a new car and support GM.
Why not support some workers at an American Toyota manufacturing plant, and also buy a car that lasts a while and doesn’t make you go broke paying your friendly neighborhood mechanic?
GM stock is doing well since the recent IPO.
I wonder how their bonds are doing? [cough]
Go for it if you like GM cars; at least they are inexpensive, until you start paying the mechanics’ bills, or realize how much money you lost when you eventually try to sell your car.
I’m a jack of all trades…………………..
If you enjoy mechanic work, then I highly recommend buying an American car and doing your own repairs.
I want this car but sadly it doesnt appear to be sold in USA.
http://www.greencar.com/articles/vw-polo-bluemotion-tops-70-mpg.php
Our 4 GM cars, one with 140K miles, have been bullet proof. I did have a transmission computer die on a Nissan Maxima I once owned.
“Our 4 GM cars, one with 140K miles, have been bullet proof.”
That’s great, and I confess my views are biased by lingering bad memories of Chevys our family owned during the 1970s. The last car that I owned which broke down on the road due to mechanical failure was a Chevrolet. I’ve owned foreign ever since…
“support some workers at [...] Toyota”
We will be. A friend of mine is planning to buy a new Toyota Prius c, listed at $21900 at the local dealer. It gets a combined 50mpg. ‘Domestic’ offerings just can’t compete on those numbers. There is a conspiracy afoot to keep Americans consuming the most gasoline.
Another fellow I met a few days ago had pulled the trigger on a 3-wheeled vehicle for tooling around the city. Tri-Fun Ext Cab, $9995 MSRP, 42mpg, reg’d like a motorcycle, 1000lb cargo, 2 seater. It even has A/C! His model is from 2009.
When I looked at the Prius circa 2005, the price was in the high $30Ks. It’s amazing what effect the elimination of green car subsidies has subsequently done to approve Prius affordability!
I realize I’m posting late but my wife bought a prius around ‘06 and we paid in the low 20s.
The “game” is the usual nickel and diming for “high status” features. Onboard GPS was something around 2 or 3 THOUSAND dollars. Um, for that I’ll use a $200 handheld GPS or now-a-days use my phone. Same deal w/ the stereo system, where factory installed is a bit lower tech than anything you can buy at bestbuy, but ten times the cost. Ditto everything else.
We had to special order (took about 2 months to arrive). Everything on the lot, as you say, was loaded and in the 30s.
“GM stock is doing well since the recent IPO.”
You mean GM II. GM I vaporized uber millions of small investors share holdings. I’d buy a North Korean vehicle before a GM one - if they were my only second choice. No one within my family will ever buy any GM product or service again. To damn bad my 401K plan’s total stock fund has a bit of GM in it, would like to get rid of that too. Buy American? Depends on which American.
“I’d buy a North Korean vehicle before a GM one…”
That’s not much of a ringing endorsement for our Detroit manufacturers…
No one within my family will ever buy any GM product or service again.
+1 Good advice.
It’s a little embarrassing for me to buy Japanese, as one of my BIL’s is a GM assembly line worker. That said, I fear for my life every time I settle into their family’s Chevy van.
I’d buy a GM vehicle if it was the right vehicle for me. To be honest I wish the BMW I just bought said “Chevelle SS” on it.
But I’ll never buy GM bonds, that’s for sure.
Is QE3 fully priced into stocks by now?
Friday, March 16, 2012 - 15:00
Chicago Fed’s Evans: Fed Can, Should Take More Steps on Econ
By Steven K. Beckner
(MNI) - Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said Friday that U.S. monetary policymakers “can and should take additional steps” to promote faster economic growth.
Evans did not explicitly call for another round of quantitative easing — something he has favored in the past — but called again for announcing more explicit economic “triggers” to clarify that the Fed won’t raise the federal funds rate from near zero so long as unemployment is above 7% and inflation is 3% or less.
Evans, who dissented in favor of additional monetary easing at the November and December Federal Open Market Committee meetings, called 3% inflation” a risk that we should be willing to accept” and a rate that “isn’t high enough to unhinge long-run inflation expectations,” according to a speech prepared for delivery to an International Research Forum on Monetary Policy in Frankfurt, Germany.
At its Jan. 25 meeting, the FOMC extended the expected period of zero rates “at least through late 2014,” announced a 2% inflation target and incorporated federal funds rate forecasts into its Summary of Economic Projections.
Evans, a member of Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen’s subcommittee on communication, said those steps, while welcome, did not go far enough. And there “mere chance” that the FOMC might raise the funds rate before unemployment has fallen below 7% “may be diminishing” monetary accommodation.
…
I find it funny that if the FED buys treasuries directly from US treasury they call it monetizing the debt. So to make things look better the primary dealers buy the treasuries and then the FED buys them from primary dealers. It must be nice to front run the treasury market, what a job.
Interesting to note how foreign central bank purchases of U.S. Treasurys are rising, along with the stock market.
Do foreign central bankers know something the Wall Street muppets are missing?
MARKETS
Updated March 15, 2012, 11:31 a.m. ET
China, Japan Boost U.S. Treasury Buying
By IAN TALLEY And TOM BARKLEY
WASHINGTON—China remained the top holder of U.S. Treasury debt in January, but Japan threatened to take the No. 1 position with another month of record holdings.
Overall, foreigners were net buyers of long-term U.S. financial assets in January, according to the Treasury Department’s monthly Treasury International Capital report, or TIC.
According to preliminary data, China’s holdings rose nearly $8 billion to $1.160 trillion from $1.152 trillion in December. Meanwhile, Japan continued to be a heavy net buyer of Treasurys; its holdings hit a record level of $1.079 trillion in January. Japan remained the second-largest holder of Treasurys, lifting its holdings by $21 billion from December.
Among all foreign investors, net purchases of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds totaled $82.96 billion, compared with net selling of $14.90 billion in December. Private foreign investors bought a net $47.39 billion of Treasury notes and bonds.
Data for major foreign holders of Treasury securities will next month be revised to include holdings held by some countries on behalf of others, such as custodial accounts in the U.K. held on behalf of China.
The closely watched figure of net long-term securities transactions showed total buying of $101 billion in long-term U.S. securities in January. The figure was $19.1 billion the month before.
More broadly, net purchases of long-term U.S. securities, including transactions that don’t occur on the open market, totaled $84.4 billion, following net buying of $2.8 billion the month before.
…
interesting
They must be on to something but to a reasonable investor treasuries are in a massive bubble being held up by the fed.Who knows how long it will last but not where I want to be.Maybe they have some news that yields will go lower in the near term. Pretty soon you will be paying them to take your money.
Just think if you were to lend your money to someone for 3% and run the real risk of that bond falling substantially in price before that lets say 10 year period is up. Getting 3% for the next ten years seems horrible to me.
I wonder how far out these foreign investors are mainly buying? I sure wouldn’t loan money to someone at 3% for ten years with that amount of risk. Maybe it is short term buying?
“promote faster economic growth”
Ah yes, the frikkin’ “Cult of Growth”. They continue to destroy us. What we need to do is admit we have an economic crash going on, and we need to wind down and liquidate all the bad loans. But we’re exactly like Japan– a First World nation that can’t admit the truth. So we’ve chosen the same path (hiding the losses within larger institutions) and will end up down the same road (deflation then stagnation for decades).
Not here. The cult of Someone Will Buy This Flipped House for $400k lives on around these parts. And then, someone pays…$385k for this flipped house, thinking they got the seller to “give it away.”
When velocity does turn up, does B. Bernanke have an app for that?
When velocity does turn up…
Too many retiring baby boomers. The fed/gov will be borrowing trillions to stem deflation’s losses. Things will turn around, but it’s going to take at least a decade, IMHO.
MV = PQ
Dollars Everywhere–So Where’s the Inflation?
By Martin Hutchinson and Christopher Swann
Posted Friday, March 16, 2012, at 3:10 PM ET
Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, doesn’t anticipate a spike in inflation, despite the rising money supply. Will history prove him right (and Milton Friedman wrong)?
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Money supply is rising fast, so where is the inflation? U.S. consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in February, but that was mostly gasoline. Year-on-year, inflation is above the Fed’s 2 percent target but not by much. Yet money supply is going through the roof. Either inflation is on the way, or Milton Friedman should lose his Nobel prize.
Friedman argued that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” He proposed that central banks should increase money supply at a constant annual rate, ignoring economic cycles, so as to minimize self-reinforcing bouts of inflation and deflation.
What has happened in recent years is a long way from Friedman’s recommendation. Broad money supply, whether by the so-called M2 measure or the St. Louis Fed’s money of zero maturity - a proxy for the M3 metric - is up almost 10 percent over the past year, while the adjusted monetary base, a narrower measure of money, is up over 18 percent. Friedman’s idea was that the money supply should increase at the same rate as real GDP. Other things being equal, the implication of money supply rising at 10 percent while real GDP has expanded less than 2 percent over the past year is that inflation should be running at more than 8 percent.
The relationship can be delayed. For instance, U.S. monetary policy became unusually expansive around 1965, whereas inflation did not hit 5 percent a year until 1969 and only topped 10 percent in 1974. The so-called velocity of money, essentially the pace at which each dollar is spent and recycled, is also a factor. The 2008 crash and the subsequent deleveraging process may have subdued velocity.
Nevertheless, assuming as recent data suggest that the U.S. economy is now recovering from the 2008 shock, velocity should rise to more normal levels. Applying Friedman’s theories, that in turn could bring a rapid acceleration of inflation.
Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and most of his colleagues believe that inflation will remain muted, justifying near-zero interest rates until late 2014. If Bernanke proves right, he’ll look smarter than the 1976 Nobel Committee.
Read more at Reuters Breakingviews.
If it’s not being spent, it’s just paper in a box, right?
“Money supply is rising fast, so where is the inflation? U.S. consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in February, but that was mostly gasoline. Year-on-year, inflation is above the Fed’s 2 percent target but not by much. Yet money supply is going through the roof. Either inflation is on the way, or Milton Friedman should lose his Nobel prize.”
Did you ever notice the interval between when July 4th rockets leave the ground and when they later explode high up in the sky? The fireworks transmission process occurs with long and variable lags.
The Lag from Monetary Policy Actions to Inflation: Friedman Revisited
Nicoletta Batini and Edward Nelson
External MPC Unit
Bank of England
January 2002
Abstract
This paper updates and extends Friedman’s (1972) evidence on the lag between monetary policy actions and the response of inflation. Our evidence is based on UK and US data for the period 1953–2001 on money growth rates, inflation, and interest rates, as well as annual data on money growth and inflation. We reaffirm Friedman’s result that it takes over a year before monetary policy actions have their peak effect on inflation. This result has persisted despite numerous changes in monetary policy arrangements in both countries. Similarly, advances in information processing and in financial market sophistication do not appear to have substantially shortened the lag. The empirical evaluation of dynamic general equilibrium models needs to be extended to include an assessment of these models’ ability to account for the monetary transmission lags found in the data.
I’d like to see what the velocity of money looks like at an Apple store. Went there this Tuesday morning and it wasn’t much slower than on a Saturday.
The velocity of my money is plenty high these days at the gas station. Luckily, volatile energy price inflation does not count in the Fed’s assessment, or else I would think high inflation was already here.
Articles like this one seem to ignore that FOMC members presumably read articles like this one and act accordingly. The question should be whether the concerns raised herein will still be of concern after QE3 is implemented.
Global liquidity peak spells trouble for late 2012
The global liquidity cycle has already rolled over. Assuming that no fresh action is taken, world economic growth will peak within a couple of months and then fade in the second half of the year - with grim implications for Europe’s Latin bloc.
Monetarists have had a good run during the Great Recession, and were quick to spot the turn-around in the US economy in mid-2011.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
7:00PM GMT 11 Mar 2012
Data collected by Simon Ward at Henderson Global Investors shows that M1 money supply growth in the big G7 economies and leading E7 emerging powers buckled over the winter.
The gauge - known as six-month real narrow money - peaked at 5.1pc in November. It dropped to 3.6pc in January, and to 2.1pc in February.
This is comparable to falls seen in mid-2008 in the months leading up to the Great Recession, and which caught central banks so badly off guard.
“The speed of the drop-off is worrying. This acts with a six months lag time so we can expect global growth to peak in May. There may be a sharp slowdown in the second half,” said Mr Ward.
If so, this may come as a nasty surprise to equity markets betting that America has reached “escape velocity” at long last, that Europe will scrape by with nothing worse than a light recession, and that China is safely rebounding after touching bottom over of the winter.
Stocks usually turn about two months before the real economy peaks, but not always.
Stephen Jen from SLJ Macro Partners said the world economy is weaker than it looks, with monetary stimulus losing traction in the West just as China, India, Brazil, et al, hit the buffers, constrained by inflation and their own credit woes.
“The risk here is that the credit cycles in emerging markets mature and start to deflate just as developed markets struggle with their own deleveraging process. We think 2012 will be a tough year for risk assets,” he said.
Monetary data for China is remarkable. Real M1 contracted in January, weaker than post-Lehman. The rate rebounded in February but only to zero.
It is too early to judge whether China really can deflate its property bubble with carefully-calibrated credit curbs, achieving a feat that has eluded very clever officials across the world over the last century.
But bear in mind that China has racked up loan growth of 87pc of GDP over the last five years - according to Fitch study that should be compulsory reading - compared to less than 50pc in Japan leading up to the Nikkei bubble, or in Korea before the 1998 crisis, or in the US before the subprime debacle.
We know from China Iron and Steel Association that steel output has dropped from 2m tonnes a day last year to 1.7m this year - with chilly implications for Vale and Brazil’s real, or BHP Billiton and the Aussie dollar.
We know too that R&F Properties in Guangzhou reported a 40pc fall in house sales over the first two months of the year, with a 22pc drop in price. Like others, I am watching the Confucian ’soft landing’ with curiosity.
Monetarism is not an exact science. The latest global signal may prove a false alarm. But monetarists have had a good run during the Great Recession, and were quick to spot the turn-around in the US economy in mid-2011.
What they see now is that US money is losing its fizz. Both M1 and M2 have flattened so far this year, and even contracted slightly in recent weeks.
Meanwhile velocity has plunged, with the M2 gauge dropping below 1.6 last week for the first time since records began in 1959 (as shown in the chart from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis below).
…
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I recall hearing a cynical economist on the radio, I want to say Autumn 2009, maybe it was Spring 2010, after the rapid runup in stock prices, and everyone was talking “green shoots” and this economist made the remark that the market might be correct in assessing earnings “2, 3 years out after we get through this recession.”
I’m guessing he missed out most of the 100% return in the last 3 years.
‘I’m guessing he missed out most of the 100% return in the last 3 years’
Here in AZ very few people have any funds to put into stocks. I guess these cynics missed out too, huh?
From Zerohedge:
George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early.
In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report on the NSA’s Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in the United States: “A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks…. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”… The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.” In other words, in just over 1 year, virtually anything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one’s existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will unofficially be property of the US government to deal with as it sees fit… As former NSA operative William Binney who was a senior NSA crypto-mathematician, and is the basis for the Wired article (which we guess makes him merely the latest whistleblower to step up: is America suddenly experiencing an ethical revulsion?), and quit his job only after he realized that the NSA is now openly trampling the constitution, says as he holds his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”
Looks like “Echelon” is all grow’d up now.
Skynet gained sentience almost a year ago.
“‘To talk about it as the American dream, I think people still want to own homes, but are reluctant after such a decline,’ said Ben Dunham, an agent for Henderson Land Investment Company in Urbana.”
Better to buy after a decline than after an ascent, surely?