Fed boosts rate: GAME OVER! GAME OVER! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?

The Grunt loves Aliens and anything that has to do with Colonial Marines. Sometimes in this business you feel like Hicks facing a horde of xenomorphs with the last of his unit, a 90 year old woman who looks 30 and a little girl armed with the head of a plastic doll.

According to the news the fed has hiked up the rate the seventh time this year. This is in an effort to stem inflation however they are trying to be careful not to stop the economy in its tracks. Grunt was watching ABC news when the they had Lisa Stark who said that people were suprised about the whole thing.

The Grunt has this piece of advice. If you have credit card debt, get rid of it. These hikes affect credit rates in a really, really bad way. Besides you will need ever dimeto pay your adjustable rate mortgages. A couple of months ago, the Grunt was watching Business Week now and an expert from Flynn Zito noticed that Americans were simpply shifting their debts. From what I can remember it seemed that people were either refinancing or opening home equity loans to pay off credit card bills.

I am not too crazy about these elements because if people are unable to keep up with mortgage payments or other housing bills it leads to the doomsday scenario of foreclosures and bankruptcies.

Fl Real Estate has put in an update on the fed hike.

Update: Lawrence Yun, senior economist for the National Association of Realtors.
Yun says that the 30-year fixed mortgage – now 6 percent (average) -- will be 6.7 percent by year's end. Yun is predicting that residential sales will decline 3 percent for 2005 as a whole. This comes off of four record years. There were also be a slowing in price growth. Price appreciation in 2004 was 9 percent. It will be between 5 and 5.5 percent in 2005, according to Yun.

Will New York be touched?