Quoted: Aided by the home buyer tax credit, the outlook for housing and the economy appears headed for a sustainable recovery, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.

...but the increase may just put us in-line with historical levels.

Quoted: Overall, there have been 26,372 bankruptcies filed this year in Washington state, up 46 percent over the same period last year. Experts say the tightening of consumer credit and home equity lending over the past year left many families with no other option. The level of bankruptcy filings may be returning to normal historical levels, says Robert Lawless, a bankruptcy law professor at the University of Illinois. During the '90s, about 24,000 bankruptcies were filed each year in Washington state, according to data from the American Bankruptcy Institute. From 2000 to 2004, an average 37,000 bankruptcies were filed annually. Filings peaked at 46,930 in 2005.

CIT did a lot of lending during the heydey of the market, but their presence up here in the PNW was limited.

Tough news to swallow for a company that is over 100 years old.

Quoted: The bankruptcy of CIT is likely to hand the Treasury Department its biggest loss to date under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. It invested $2.3 billion in CIT last December.

Quoted: The economy grew at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter, the best showing in two years, fueled by government-supported spending on cars and homes. It's the strongest signal yet that the economy has entered a new, though fragile, phase of recovery and that the worst recession since the 1930s has ended.

California is posting numbers signaling an improvement in the market. That's a good sign - they are one of the worst-hit states when the real estate meltdown began.

Quoted: California unsold home backlog keeps shrinking. California's unsold inventory index for existing homes in September was 4.2 months, compared with 6.5 months for the same period a year ago, according to figures released Monday by the California Association of Realtors.

This is no surprise. One wonders if a similar effect will happen when the government stops giving first-time buyers a tax credit. Hopefully, the temporary solutions inject enough money into the economy in the short-term as a "buying time" measure as real economic change and recovery take place.

Like Benadryl inhibits the body's sensation of itching until the underlying irritants have passed.

Quoted: After two frenzied months during the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, new-vehicle sales fell in September back to the dismal levels seen earlier this year, automakers said Thursday.

Quoted: And in the wake of the crisis, the fault lines in the economics profession have yawned wider than ever. Lucas says the Obama administration’s stimulus plans are “schlock economics,” and his Chicago colleague John Cochrane says they’re based on discredited “fairy tales.” In response, Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley, writes of the “intellectual collapse” of the Chicago School, and I myself have written that comments from Chicago economists are the product of a Dark Age of macroeconomics in which hard-won knowledge has been forgotten.

More good signs of some recovery. Whether or not we've bottomed out and are headed back up I think it's still too early to call (like recession, we may not be able to call a true recovery until months after it's started). But positive economic news is a good thing; I'll take it!

Quoted: Orders for durable goods rose last month by the largest amount in two years, as the manufacturing sector rebounded from the depths of the recession. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for goods expected to last at least three years increased 4.9 percent in July, the third rise in the past four months. Analysts expected a 3 percent increase. Orders for June were revised up to a 1.3 percent drop, from a 2.2 percent decline.

Quoted: Citigroup (C: 4.7976 -0.46%) kept 108,000 mortgages with a combined original value of $16bn from foreclosure in Q209, 29% more than in Q109, according to data just released by its servicing business.