Larry Summers on CNBC: “Very important to look past the next [employment] figures.” (27 second long after ad) Last week I spoke to a BLS representative, and although they will not comment on upcoming releases, he told me the BLS would prominently disclose any possible impact of the recent snow…
Binyamin Appelbaum, at the WaPo, reports that Senators Dodd and Corker (Tenn) are nearing a deal to give authority for financial consumer protection to the Federal Reserve. Uh, wasn’t the Fed already responsible for consumer financial protection? More from the WSJ: Senators Outline Plan to Create New Consumer-Protection Unit Within…
Just a reminder … John Schmid at the Journal Sentinel: Unemployment benefits for 1.2 million Americans could expire Sunday Nearly 1.2 million unemployed Americans … face an imminent cutoff of government unemployment checks if Congress cannot pass emergency legislation to extend federal benefits before funding expires Sunday. The National Employment…
Here is the Federal Reserve balance sheet break down from the Atlanta Fed weekly Financial Highlights : Graph Source: Altanta Fed. From the Atlanta Fed: The balance sheet expanded $20 billion, to $2.3 trillion, for the week ended February 17. Holdings of agency debt and mortgage backed securities increased $49…
The NAR reports: Existing-Home Sales Down in January Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – dropped 7.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 5.05 million units in January from a revised 5.44 million in December, but remain 11.5 percent above the 4.53 million-unit level in…
Note: I’ve added a list of “Posts Today” and “Posts Yesterday” on the right sidebar so everyone can find posts on recent economic releases (this has been a busy day and week)! On Monday I linked to an article by Floyd Norris at the NY Times: Horrid Job Number Coming…
Paul Kiel at ProPublica reports: Chase and Other Servicers Leave Many in Loan Mod Limbo; Treasury Threatens Penalties About 97,000 homeowners in the government’s mortgage modification program have been stuck in a trial period for over six months. Most of them, about 60,000, have their mortgages with a single mortgage…
Floyd Norris writes at the NY Times: Horrid Job Number Coming It snowed this month in much of the United States. … Both the household survey (which produces the unemployment rate) and the employer survey (which produces the job count) ask about workers in the week during which the 12th…
From James Hagerty at the WSJ: U.S. Weighs Changes to Mortgage-Relief Program The U.S. Treasury is considering new … proposals … to give borrowers 30 days to respond after being denied a modification of their loan terms under the … HAMP. During that period, which would allow borrowers to appeal…
Peter Goodman at the NY Times profiles a few of the long term unemployed: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out…