LeaseTrader.com, a third party car lease database, recently released a report that analyzes the financial stability of an industry by the car leases its industry employees are terminating. The report found that 43% of Realtors are “escaping” their expensive car leases in 2010, down from 68% in 2008, while 32% of financial executives are following suit, down from 63% in 2008. Hallelujah, the housing finance industry is stabilizing! The study sounds loosely correlated, I know. But if we, for a minute, pretend that everyone in industries such as finance, first of all, leases a car (who wants to own now-a-days with all the new models coming out every other day?), and drives a car over $40,000, we could have some true and uplifting data on our hands. Never mind economic outlooks or market statistics telling us that things are terrible. Forget about low interest rates as a sign of nonexistent demand. Things are good enough that the head honchos on Wall Street no longer have to give up their pretty toys to pay their bills. Then again, maybe this is just the backlog of Realtors and financial execs who didn’t deleverage in 2008. Write to Christine Ricciardi.
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