From the category archives:
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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The National Association of Realtors just released the latest data on pending home sales. The June figures continued the recent trend of improvement …
* Pending home sales climbed 3.6% in June. That was much better than the 0.7% gain that economists were expecting. Last month’s 0.1% gain was also revised higher, to 0.8%.
* On a [...]
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Yesterday’s record 2-year Treasury Note auction went off fairly well. Today’s 5-year auction? Not so much. The Treasury tried to sell a record $39 billion of notes. Pre-auction talk was for the notes to sell at a yield of 2.635%. Instead, they went off at 2.689%, more than 5 basis points higher. The bid-to-cover ratio [...]
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The housing market data has taken on an improving tone of late. The June existing home sales report was no exception. Let’s get to the details …
* Existing home sales gained 3.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units from a downwardly revised 4.72 million in May. That was roughly in line [...]
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I feel like it’s Thanksgiving afternoon, with a feast of stories to chew on today. In no particular order …
* The government is finally going to allow one of these ne’er-do-well financial firms fail, apparently. I’m talking about CIT Group, the commercial lender that’s been struggling for months. Apparently, the Treasury, Federal Reserve and especially [...]
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Hope everyone is having a decent Monday. One item that’s worth noting this afternoon is the latest budget update from the U.S. Treasury. Turns out the June deficit came in at $94.3 billion, the first time there’s been a deficit for that month since 1991. It’s also the largest June deficit ever. The year-to-date tally [...]
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I said back when the Obama administration’s mortgage modification programs were being rolled out that they would likely NOT meet the ambitious expectations spelled out by policymakers. There are several reasons why mortgage servicers and investors are not as willing (or able) to modify loans as aggressively as the politicians want them to. A great [...]
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