Washington Mutual made home loans it knew would tank while top executives were rewarded for high-risk lending and lax controls, according to internal WaMu documents released by a Senate panel. . The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that in addition to the high-risk strategy, WaMu’s lending practices were fraudulent and led borrowers…
From DataQuick: More Incremental Gains for Southland Real Estate Market A total of 20,476 new and resale homes sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month. That was up 33.3 percent from 15,359 in February, and up 5.0 percent from 19,506 in March…
Bloomberg — Nouriel Roubini talks with Bloomberg Television about Federal Reserve monetary policy and the U.S. economy. (Click for Video [1:05] – This report is an excerpt of the full interview). All rights reserved, Roubini Global Economics, LLC . Opinions expressed on RGE EconoMonitors are those of individual…
Kirsten Grind at the Puget Sound Business Journal is blogging from the WaMu hearing . How about this quote? “My opinion is the OTS examiner in charge during the period of time I was there did an excellent job of finding and raising issues . Likewise, I found good performance…
This is the new UCLA Anderson Forecast and Ceridian Corporation index using real-time diesel fuel consumption data: Pulse of Commerce Index TM Press Release : March PCI Increase Indicates U.S. Economy on 4 Percent Growth Track Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ (PCI) by UCLA Anderson School of Management staged a…
The Census Bureau reports : [T]otal February exports of $143.2 billion and imports of $182.9 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $39.7 billion, up from $37.0 billion in January, revised. Click on graph for larger image. The first graph shows the monthly U.S. exports and imports in…
From the National Federation of Independent Business: Small Business Optimism Declines in March The National Federation of Independent Business Index of Small Business Optimism lost 1.2 points in March, falling to 86.8. The persistence of index readings below 90 is unprecedented in survey history. “The March reading is very low…
Something a little different … From the Boston Globe: Travel swells cost of housing People who move to an outlying Boston suburb to find affordable housing or to get more house for their money often sacrifice the savings to higher transportation costs, according to a study to be released today…
Jim Puzzanghera at the LA Times has a preview: Washington Mutual created ‘mortgage time bomb,’ Senate panel finds Before Washington Mutual collapsed … its executives knowingly created “a mortgage time bomb” by steering borrowers to subprime mortgages and turning the loans into securities the company knew were likely to go…
After over a year in development and two consecutive all-nighters from the programming team, we’ve officially soft launched the new Surefire 2.0 platform. Here’s a short list of FAQ’s about our new Contact Management System : What Should I Expect Today? Today’s release is pretty raw, but it will…