From the category archives:
I probably received more feedback on my Obama mortgage plan comments — both here at this blog and in other venues — than on any other topic. Good. I’m glad to see people are engaged on this issue.
Judging by a few of the comments, however, I think I need to elaborate on one point: I [...]
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The earlier post I put up was based on media reports. Now, the Obama administration has officially released its plan to reduce foreclosures. The details can be found here (PDF link). Let’s get into the major components …
The centerpiece of the program is designed to encourage loan modifications through government subsidies and payments — payments [...]
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I’m seeing potentially significant moves in several areas of the currency and bond market this morning. Most notably, the Dollar Index is breaking out to the upside (+89 ticks to 87.55) and the 2-year swap spread is blowing out (+15 basis points to about 73 bps as I write). These are “yellow alert” signals that [...]
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The “foreclosure moratorium” wave sweeping through the mortgage world continues to pick up momentum. Just today, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup announced they would halt home foreclosures through March (the 6th for JPMorgan and the 12th for Citigroup) — or until the Obama administration rolls out its latest foreclosure prevention plan.
For JPMorgan, no new [...]
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The Treasury just sold $14 billion of 30-year bonds. The auction wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t so hot, either. Pre-auction talk was for the bonds to sell at a yield of 3.51%. Instead, they sold at 3.54%. The bid-to-cover ratio came in at just 2.02, compared with 2.07 at the last auction and an average [...]
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If you’re interested in the full text of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s speech from this morning, you can read it here. But I’ll sum it up by saying that it contains a lot of talk, with few details. Everyone is kind of sitting around and asking, “That’s it? No real details on the plan? No [...]
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So today is the big day. The Obama administration is putting a full-court press on for the bank bailout plan, and most of the details of the efforts are now hitting the tape in various forms.
One key component will be expansion of the TALF program, which is designed to light a fire under the asset [...]
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I’ve been in New York this week attending a real estate seminar, and while I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to share my thoughts on the housing and interest rate markets with a few media outlets. You can watch a Wall Street Journal spot here, a BNN TV spot here, and a CNBC Asia spot [...]
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The Federal Reserve just released its latest statement. The message in a nutshell: Rates will stay low for a long time and we’ll buy anything and everything to keep credit costs low:
“The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to keep its target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent. The Committee [...]
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The banking stocks recently suffered another mini-crash. So it’s no surprise Washington is responding with yet another “solution” to the crisis. Every few months, this happens. Some bank, broker, or subsector of the credit market blows up … policymakers try to think up a solution … that solution gets leaked to the press ahead of [...]
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