From the category archives:
We just got our latest look at existing home sales from the National Association of Realtors. Sales rose 1.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million in October from 4.9 million a month earlier. That topped expectations for a reading of 4.8 million. We saw strength in most of the country, with sales [...]
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Federal Reserve policymakers are meeting in Jackson Hole Wyoming this week — and global investors couldn’t be more excited.
Judging from today’s market action, they’re expecting big things from the Fed at the end of the week — something; anything to save the U.S. economy and stock market.
Unfortunately, they’re likely to [...]
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The Mortgage Bankers Association just released figures on Q4 2009 home loan performance. What did the numbers show?
* The overall mortgage delinquency rate fell to 9.47% in Q4 2009 from 9.64% in Q3 2009. That’s the first quarter-over-quarter decline in delinquencies since Q1 2007. Of particular note: The percentage of loans 30 days behind on [...]
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The latest Beige Book report on the state of the economy was just released by the Fed. The summary suggests we’re seeing more stability and/or gradual improvement in the economy:
“Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicate that economic conditions have generally improved modestly since the last report. Eight Districts indicated some pickup in activity [...]
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There are a couple of interesting stories worth mentioning this morning. The first is from Bloomberg, which talks about the possibility of Congress pressuring the Federal Reserve to continue its housing and mortgage market support next year.
My take? The idea that the Fed will pull back proactively, or will stand up to political pressure, is [...]
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Just a thought, but maybe we should call our Federal Reserve Chairman the “Bernanke-nator.” As Kyle Reese said in the original Terminator movie … “Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not [...]
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There’s an interesting debate going on in D.C. right now over the FHA loan program. FHA was a non-player during the housing boom because private lenders were falling all over themselves to offer crappy loans to crappy borrowers. Now they’re out of the business … and all those crappy borrowers are going to FHA instead. [...]
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There are some good stories at the Washington Post today about how the Fed is fueling fresh carry trades/bubbles by keeping interest rates pegged around zero. I covered this exact same topic a few days ago. The Fed seems to have no other solution for burst bubbles than easy money … which then fuels new [...]
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The American Bankers Association just released its latest look at quarterly delinquencies for a wide variety of consumer credit products. Here’s a peek at what the group’s numbers showed:
* The composite index that tracks delinquencies on all products rose to 3.23% in Q1 2009. That was up ever so slightly from 3.22% a quarter earlier, [...]
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The Federal Open Market Committee left its interest rate target unchanged at 0% to 0.25%. Also, the Fed left its targets for purchases of Treasury debt, GSE debt, and mortgage backed securities unchanged. The complete statement is as follows:
“Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that the pace of economic [...]
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