From the category archives:
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s figures on home loan performance just keep getting worse and worse. Here is what things looked like in Q3 2009:
* The overall mortgage delinquency rate surged to 9.64% in Q3 2009 from 9.24% in Q2 2009 and 6.99% a year earlier. Once again, this is a fresh record high for the [...]
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There’s a lot of chatter on the dollar front today. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told a group of Japanese reporters that he “believe[s] deeply that it’s very important for the U.S. and the economic health of the U.S. that we maintain a strong dollar.”
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is also up in arms about the [...]
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Okay, so that’s not the headline you’re going to read on the wires. But really, his speech at the Conference on Asia and the Global Financial Crisis in Santa Barbara, California is very academic. It’s focused on longer-term trade and growth issues, and frankly, I don’t see any explicit or implicit comments directed at the [...]
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You have to love it: The just released Fed minutes from the September 22-23 meeting are looking unbelievably dovish. Some Fed members were reportedly even open to INCREASING the size of MBS purchases. This from a Fed whose quantitative easing policies are driving the dollar into the crapper. Seriously? Meanwhile, the Fed minutes note that [...]
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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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The latest Fed meeting just wrapped up. And just as I expected, policymakers decided to keep the liquor flowing and the music playing as loud as possible!
Specifically, the Fed kept its interest rate target unchanged at 0% to 0.25%. It also signaled that it planned to maintain “exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate [...]
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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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If you get a chance, check out my latest video update. It gives you a heads up about what to expect when the two-day Federal Open Market Committee wraps up tomorrow afternoon. Here’s the link.
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Somewhat surprisingly, the auction of $28 billion 7-year Treasury Notes went pretty well. The notes were sold at a yield of 3.092%, compared with pre-auction talk of 3.124%. Some 61.2% of the notes went to indirect bidders, while the bid-to-cover ratio came in at 2.74. That compares with 62.5% and 2.63 at the last sale [...]
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The Treasury just unloaded $39 billion in 5-year Treasury Notes, tying a record for the largest such auction ever. How’d things go? The notes were sold at a yield of 2.494%. That was ever-so-slightly better than the 2.509% yield the market was expecting, according to Bloomberg.
Indirect bidders bought 56.4% of the notes sold, while the [...]
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