Part of this is not by choice, as the housing bubble allowed homeowners to cash in their home's value and spend the equity, and the dot-com bubble allowed even novice investors to feel wealthy, for a time.
Las Vegas is built on two faulty premises; unlimited credit for free spending, equity extracting gamblers and an unlimited access to natural resources like water.
Rising home prices in Britain have allowed consumers to take out ever bigger loans against the value of their homes, and many are spending the equity freely.
The other 90% of the deal was marketed to outsiders, who bought tranches in the deal rated AAA, AA and A. For Goldman, $31 million spent on equity and BBB bonds was the cost of putting the deal together.
According to the Harvard study, homeowners with at least 20 percent equity spend an average of 22 percent more on improvements than homeowners with lower equity levels.
Brown said in a letter to shareholders May 9 that MBIA won't spend the $1.1 billion in equity it raised most recently until there is a stable target capitalization level at its insurance operating company.
Because banks have debt-to-equity ratios of 10 to one or higher, a dollar spent buying an equity stake would support 10 times as many assets as a dollar spent buying up individual securities.
We will also soon launch a formal job-swap program, with a pool of around 40 people who will be sent on three-month assignments, so that, for instance, a new recruit in BTV can spend time on the equities team on First Word and vice versa.
Despite millions spent lobbying, private equity's chances were looking grim; at house hearings in September, an army of panelists testified that calling carried interest anything other than regular income was a sham.
What we won't see again any time soon because it is not available is consumers spending their home equity.
