From the monthly archives:
I can count on one hand the number of economists who were expecting the holiday shopping season to be a good one. But even the generally grim consensus forecasts apparently weren’t grim enough, according to early sales results. Here are some more details from the Wall Street Journal …
“Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday [...]
{ 2 comments }
We got a two-fer today: Data on both new and existing home sales for the month of November. So what did the numbers from the Census Bureau and the National Association of Realtors show?
NEW HOMES:* New home sales dropped 2.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 407,000 from 419,000 in October (originally reported as [...]
{ 0 comments }
It’s another “Fed day” today, with the FOMC’s two-day policy meeting set to wrap up later and the results to be announced at roughly 2:15 eastern. Market betting is that the Fed will cut rates by 50 basis points to a record-low 0.5%. But one has to wonder if that really matters. The “effective” federal [...]
{ 2 comments }
Things keep getting curiouser and curiouser over at the Federal Reserve. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Fed is now considering issuing its OWN debt for the first time ever. As you probably know, the Treasury is the primary institution that issues U.S. government debt. More below on this very odd development …
“The Federal [...]
{ 1 comment }
There was an interesting column at the Wall Street Journal site today about the long-term implications of all this borrowing and spending the country is doing. It talks about how President-Elect Obama will have to balance the demand for bailout money from everyone and anyone against the need to … eventually … get the deficit [...]
{ 1 comment }
The National Association of Realtors released its report on October pending home sales today. Here’s what the figures showed:
* Pending home sales dipped 0.7% in October. That was better than the 3% decline that economists were expecting. September’s reading was revised to -4.3% from -4.6%.
* The pending home sales index, at 88.9, was down 1% [...]
{ 0 comments }
