Remember when housing was the primary aspirational asset for a still existent US middle class, to be purchased with some equity down by your average 30 year-old hoping to start a family in his or her brand new home, and, as the name implies, aspire to reach the American dream? Those days are long gone. Back in those days the interest rate on the 10 Year bond mattered as it determined the prevailing marginal affordability of leveraged real estate. That is no longer the case, at least not for about 90% of Americans, because as Goldman shows, while before the great crisis only 20% of home purchases were ‘all cash’, since then the number has soared threefold, and currently the estimated percentage of cash transactions (by count and amount) has hit a record 60%. In other words, less than half of all home purchases are debt-funded, and thus less than half of all home purchases are actually representative of what middle-class America is doing.

Goldman’s take:

Exhibit 4 shows the estimated cash transactions as percent of total home sales both by transaction count and by transaction dollar amount. Relative to the pre-crisis years, percent cash transactions has risen […]

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Two more recent reports suggest that the electricity energy world may change very rapidly, and in ways that may look very different indeed.

Research group HIS predicts that residential PV storage systems will increase from 12 megawatts (MW) in 2012 to 2,500 MW by 2017 – in large part stimulated by Germany’s energy storage subsidy. Germany’s storage incentive (which has 22 million Euros remaining this year) provides a 30% reduction in upfront costs of residential storage systems. The country is reducing its solar feed-in tariffs (how much the utilities pay solar producers for their renewable power). As a consequence, there is increased impetus for storing power on-site and using it when the PV systems are not producing.

The storage dynamic may follow that which has occurred with costs of solar installations. Germany’s feed-in tariff drove solar costs down by increasing volumes and scale efficiencies. Other countries followed, and this eventually vastly improved technologies, manufacturing processes, pipeline efficiencies, and overall cost-effectiveness in world markets. Sam Wilkinson, PV research manager and co-author of the report predicts that ‘price reductions achieved by mass production will also benefit installations in other countries

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South Florida’s Lake Okeechobee is one of the state’s most celebrated sites, but this month is may also be a pending environmental disaster. One of the largest lakes in the United States, it is also one of the most shallow, just nine feet deep on average during normal conditions. Unfortunately heavy downpours over the last few months have left water levels in the lake closer to 15.5 feet. Now some people fear the swollen lake may be ready to burst. If that happens, decades of pollution and waste that have gathered in Okeechobee could soon flood the surrounding region, the New York Times reports.

The swollen lake has already sent polluted waters into nearby estuaries. The pollution - runoff from farms, home septic systems and golf courses - is feeding the growth of toxic algae, which can kill oysters and affect manatees, sea grass and other freshwater organisms.

‘These coastal estuaries cannot take this,’ Mark D. Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society, told the Times. ‘These estuaries are so important to us, our environment and our economies.’

Meanwhile, the lake pollution - visibly evident in the form of brown, murky water or green algae - is reportedly hurting both tourism and […]

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Fifty US power plants emit more greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels than all but six nations, says a new report.

The study by Environment America paints a bulls-eye on the nation’s biggest coal-fired power plants, suggesting that reining in a relatively small share of America’s 6,000 electric generating facilities could have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

The report comes as the Obama administration is preparing the nation’s first-ever greenhouse gas emissions regulations for US power plants, which could be released as soon as this month. The administration’s goal is to have power plant emissions regulations in place by 2015, and the new study provides a window into which plants could face steep federal fines unless they slash emissions or close.

RECOMMENDED: Think you know the odd effects of global climate change? Take our quiz.

Of the country’s 6,000 coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar electric-generating facilities, a small sub-group of mostly coal-fired power generators produces more than its share of the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions compared with the electricity it produces, the report found. The ’50 dirtiest’ power plants generated nearly 33 percent of the US power sector’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2011 but only about 16 percent […]

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Canadian author Naomi Klein is so well known for her blade-sharp commentary that it’s easy to forget that she is, above all, a first-rate reporter. I got a glimpse into her priorities as I was working on this interview. Klein told me she was worried that some of the things she had said would make it hard for her to land an interview with a president of the one of the Big Green groups (read below and you’ll see why). She was more interested in nabbing the story than being the story; her reporting trumped any opinion-making.

Such focus is a hallmark of Klein’s career. She doesn’t do much of the chattering class’s news cycle blathering. She works steadily, carefully, quietly. It can be surprising to remember that Klein’s immense global influence rests on a relatively small body of work; she has published three books, one of which is an anthology of magazine pieces.

Klein’s first book, No Logo, investigated how brand names manipulate public desires while exploiting the people who make their products. The book came out just weeks after the WTO protests in Seattle and became an international bestseller. Her next major book, The Shock Doctrine, argued that free-marketeers often […]

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