From Treasury: Administration Releases February Loan Modification Report Click on graph for larger image in new window. Over 168,000 modifications are now permanent. 88,663 trial modificatons have been cancelled (and another 1,499 permanent mods cancelled). Here is the report . … Read More

From Planet Money: Podcast: We Bought A Toxic Asset! And the story is here: We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die . An excerpt: Finally, we find a beautiful, totally toxic asset at what [Wit Solberg, a … Read More

The Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales report from the Census Bureau today showed that the inventory-to-sales ratio was mostly back to normal in January. Manufacturers’ and trade inventories, adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated … Read More

The NY Times Deal Book has posted the Lehman’s examiners report online: Court-Appointed Lehman Examiner Unveils Report There is an interesting excerpt on the apparent use of repo transactions to bolster Lehman’s balance sheet: … former Global Financial Controller Martin … Read More

Note: This is not Mortgage Equity Withdrawal (MEW) data from the Fed. The last MEW data from Fed economist Dr. Kennedy was for Q4 2008. My thanks to Jim Kennedy and the other Fed contributors for the previous MEW updates. … Read More

Update: corrected mortgage debt amount. The Federal Reserve released the Q4 2009 Flow of Funds report today: Flow of Funds . According to the Fed, household net worth is now off $11.8 Trillion from the peak in 2007, but up … Read More

The Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) released a new report: The Unique Treatment of GMAC Under the TARP [T]he Panel remains unconvinced that bankruptcy was not a viable option in 2008. In connection with the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, Treasury might … Read More

It is probably time for the U.S. to consider the next set of stress tests for the banks. That is what the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is doing in the U.K. From the FSA : We have now embedded our … Read More

From CR: There are so many reports of a housing bubble in China, I asked a friend living in China for his thoughts … this is his view: From Michael Kleist in Shanghai: News of soaring housing prices in China, … Read More

The MBA reports: Purchase Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. … The Refinance Index decreased 1.5 … Read More