First a summary of employment posts, and some other stories: • Employment Report: 85K Jobs Lost, 10% Unemployment Rate for graphs of unemployment rate and a comparison to previous recessions. • Seasonal Employment-Population Ratio, Part Time Workers, Temporary Workers • Unemployed over 26 Weeks, Diffusion Index, Seasonal Retail Hiring And other stories: • From SacBee: Schwarzenegger declares budget emergency, proposes deep cuts • From Bloomberg: Soured Non-Agency Mortgages Rise to 1.81 Million • From Bloomberg: Tishman, BlackRock to Miss Stuyvesant Town Payment HAMP 2nd Lien Program Update In an email exchange with me, Treasury spokesperson Meg Reilly clarified the status of the HAMP 2nd Lien program today. Ms. Reilly told me the program is “moving forward”, and although there are no “official contracts signed yet, … servicers are committing to the program”. She characterized the email received 1 by Tom Lawler from HAMP administration as “misleading” (I think that means “incorrect”). Ms. Reilly also wrote: The Second Lien program is moving forward. Treasury has been working to create program infrastructure and technology, including a new platform that matches second liens to first liens modified under HAMP. Because there has not been a systematic method of notification to second lien holders when a first lien on the same property is modified, ramp up has taken some time.

Read more here – Treasury: HAMP 2nd Lien Program is "moving forward", and more