From the category archives:
The October jobs report was just released. It showed the economy losing 190,000 jobs last month, slightly worse than the -175,000 forecast. However, September’s job loss was revised to only -219,000 from -263,000, while August’s reading also improved to -154,000 from -201,000.
The unemployment rate spiked to 10.2% from 9.8%, well above the 9.9% forecast of [...]
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The Federal Open Market Committee just released its latest interest rate decision and statement. Rates were left unchanged, as expected, at a range of 0% to 0.25%. The Fed also held onto its language pledging to keep rates low for an “extended period.” One minor surprise: The Fed said it would reduce the size of [...]
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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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We just got pending home sales figures from the National Association of Realtors. Here’s what they looked like:
* Pending home sales surged 6.1% in September. That was much better than the unchanged reading that economists were expecting. It’s also the eighth consecutive monthly rise.
* On a year-over-year basis, the pending sales index jumped 21.1% to [...]
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The latest S&P/Case-Shiller home price index figures were just released. On a month-over-month basis, prices were up 1.2% in 20 top metropolitan areas in August. That marked the fourth consecutive monthly gain. On a year-over-year basis, home prices were down 11.3%. That was better than the 11.9% decline economists were expecting and an improvement from [...]
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The September existing home sales figures recently hit the tape. Here’s what the numbers looked like:
* Existing home sales jumped 9.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.57 million units from 5.09 million in August. That was twice the gain that was expected and the rate of sales was the highest since July 2007.
* [...]
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Our “What me, Worry?” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may not care about the falling dollar. But foreign central banks are getting seriously peeved about the strength in their currencies against the ever-depreciating dollar …
* The Bank of Canada released a statement today saying that “heightened volatility and persistent strength in the Canadian dollar are working [...]
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We just got the latest data on housing starts and permits. Here’s what the numbers showed:
* September housing starts inched up by 0.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000 from a downwardly revised 587,000 in August. Single family starts rose 3.9%, while multifamily starts dropped 15.2%. Starts are still down 28.2% from year-earlier [...]
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The latest National Association of Home Builders index was just released. The index fell to 18 in October from 19 in September. The subindex tracking present sales fell to 17 from 18, the subindex tracking expectations about future sales dropped to 27 from 29, and the subindex measuring prospective buyer traffic slumped to 14 from [...]
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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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