From the category archives:
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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We’re unloading tons of Treasury debt this week. First up: A record-tying $42 billion in 2-year Notes. The notes just sold at a yield of 1.119%, slightly above the 1.115% that participants expected. Indirect bidders snapped up 49.4% of the notes sold, while the bid-to-cover ratio came in at 2.68. The bidder percentage figure rose [...]
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The Obama administration threw in the towel on its optimistic deficit projections today. The White House is now forecasting cumulative deficits of $9 trillion over the next 10 years, compared with a previous estimate of $7.1 trillion. At the same time, the projection for this year’s deficit dropped to $1.6 trillion; the improvement stems from [...]
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The Mortgage Bankers Association released data on second quarter mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures this morning. Here’s what we learned:
* The overall mortgage delinquency rate inched up to 9.24% in Q2 2009 from 9.12% in Q1 2009 and 6.41% a year earlier. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is yet another record [...]
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The Treasury Department just released the details of its next round of debt auctions. It looks like we’ll get $37 billion in 3-year notes on Tuesday, $23 billion in 10-year notes on Wednesday and $15 billion in 30-year bonds on Thursday. Treasury also admitted that auction sizes will rise “gradually” in the medium term, and [...]
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