From the monthly archives:
The Wall Street Journal covers the aggressive, renewed use of incentives by new home builders. An
excerpt:
“Highlighting their desperation to sell houses, builders are bringing back the gimmicks — mortgage rates that start
low, help with down payments, zero out-of-pocket expenses — that helped fuel the housing bubble before it went bust.
“But this time, they say, history [...]
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We just got April existing home sales data from the National Association of Realtors. Here’s what the numbers looked
like …
* Sales dropped 1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million in April from 4.94 million in March (previously
reported as 4.93 million). That was a bit better than the forecast of 4.85 million home [...]
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Many risk spreads have narrowed since the Fed-organized bailout of Bear Stearns. But we’re seeing some signs of
renewed, minor turbulence in the corporate bond market. One reason? Defaults are rising. There have already been more
global defaults this year than we had in all of 2007. More details in this excerpt from Bloomberg:
“Credit-default swaps on the [...]
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The Federal Reserve continues to face an ugly dilemma: The growth
numbers don’t look good, but the inflation numbers are off the charts. That trend
continued into May, according to the latest figures from the University of Michigan. The group’s confidence index
dropped to 59.5 from 62.6 in April. That’s the lowest reading since June 1980. Indices that [...]
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics told us the other day that gas prices are down. The Fed has been
blathering on for months about how inflation is “contained.” Unfortunately, here in
RealityLand, that doesn’t fly. In fact, there’s a great story in
the Washington Post today about how gas prices are rising so quickly that some older gas [...]
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We just got a look at the latest National Association of Home Builders survey. Here’s
what the May numbers looked like
…
* The overall index slipped to 19 this month from 20 in April. Economists were expecting an unchanged reading. The
cycle low (so far) was 18 in December.
* The sub-index measuring current home sales fell 1 point [...]
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Bank of America made some headlines today when it announced that losses on its book of
home equity loans, or second mortgages, would be worse than expected. Specifically, according to Bloomberg:
“Bank of America Corp., the nation’s biggest consumer bank, said losses on
home-equity loans will be even worse than predicted three weeks earlier, adding to evidence that [...]
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This week is a biggie on the inflation front, with import price data out this morning
and the Consumer Price Index coming tomorrow. So what did the April numbers show? That import inflation is simply out of control. Consider:
* Import prices jumped 1.8% on the month, bigger than the
1.6% increase that economists were expecting. More importantly, [...]
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Good Monday morning to you all. Here’s a quick roundup of the headlines that are capturing my attention at this time
…
* HSBC set aside $3.2
billion to cover bad U.S. loans. That sounds awful, but it’s actually below the $4.2 billion to $4.8 billion that
analysts polled by Bloomberg were expecting. HSBC got into subprime mortgage lending [...]
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Late yesterday, we got some startling statistics. In the month of March, consumer credit outstanding (auto loans, credit cards, and other non-real estate loans) surged $15.3 billion. That was the
biggest rise since November and much more than the $6 billion economists were expecting. In fact, consumers took out
$34 billion in consumer loans during the first [...]
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