From the monthly archives:
We just got the latest figures on home construction. Here’s what they showed …
* Total housing starts dropped 10.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 510,000 from a downwardly revised 572,000 in February. Building permits dropped 9% to a fresh all-time low of 513,000 from an upwardly revised 564,000. Economists were expecting 540,000 starts [...]
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I highlighted General Growth Properties as a company that was in serious debt trouble a little while back. This morning, GGP filed for bankruptcy protection. The firm is entering Chapter 11 with $27 billion in debt, making this the biggest commercial real estate bankruptcy ever. More from the Wall Street Journal below:
“Mall owner General Growth [...]
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The Consumer Price Index followed up this morning on yesterday’s Producer Price Index. The message: Deflation is here. Prices dropped 0.4% year-over-year in the month of March. That was the single biggest decline going all the way back to August 1955. The “core” CPI is still up 1.8% on the year, but even that has [...]
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The attitude of the administration toward the results of the so-called “stress test” of the country’s 19 biggest banks seems to change every day. Will the results be kept secret? Will we just get aggregate data, or will we get an institution-by-institution breakdown? How much data will the public be given? Those are questions that [...]
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If you’re looking for a “reflation” courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s massive money-pumping efforts, you’re going to be hardpressed to find it in the latest economic figures. Let’s get straight to the numbers …
* The Producer Price Index dropped 1.2% in the month of March, compared with expectations for an unchanged reading and a February [...]
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There’s an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this morning. It talks about how banks that have received TARP funds are raising rates on various loan products and continuing to push loans that consumer advocates view as toxic. Other recent stories have highlighted how many borrowers continue to be cut off by their banks.
These [...]
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The seemingly endless line of companies looking for taxpayer-funded bailouts just keeps getting longer, and the folks in Washington show no sign of forcing anyone out of it. This morning, we’ve learned that life insurance firms will receive aid from the TARP.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“The Treasury Department has decided to extend bailout funds to [...]
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It seems like every so often, the “bidding” on the level of total global credit losses goes higher. Some economist somewhere re-runs his or her models and throws out a gigantic number — which is then topped by yet another astronomical number published by someone else a few weeks or months later. Only this time, [...]
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It’s “jobs” week again in econo-land. The biggest report is the Labor Department’s employment situation release on Friday. But we’re already getting an early peek at how the labor market is doing, courtesy of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas and ADP.
Challenger’s report showed a month-over-month decline in job cut announcements of 35,939 between February [...]
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