March 2009 - Around The Web

Monthly Economic Statistics Summary

Here are the Kennedy-Greenspan estimates (NSA - not seasonally adjusted) of home equity extraction for Q4 2008, provided by Jim Kennedy based on the mortgage system presented in "," Alan Greenspan and James Kennedy, Federal Reserve Board FEDS...

More good news…for loan originators. The Mortgage Bankers Association increased its 2009 mortgage lending forecast by $800 billion to $2.78 trillion thanks to the expected refinance bonanza. The group now expects refinancing to total $1.96 trillion...

The embattled Mortgage Bankers Association cut another 20 full-time staff positions yesterday, according to National Mortgage News. The layoffs affected roughly 16 percent of its workforce, which has now been reduced by some 30 percent since last year...

From Paul Jackson at Housing Wire: [T]he Mortgage Bankers Association, which said that it had increased its forecast of mortgage originations in 2009 by over $800 billion, due to a refinancing boom ... The MBA said it now expects originations to total...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told an angry Congress on Tuesday that he needs authority to step in to shut down troubled institutions like American International Group to avoid future government bailouts.

The Obama administration will ask Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fifteen of 20 American International Group leading bonus recipients have agreed to give them back in full, said New York's top legal officer who is probing into $165 million in executive pay at the troubled company bailed out...

An index that tracks subprime mortgage-backed securities makes its biggest one-day jump since early February, rallying after the Treasury Department releases details of a plan to encourage investors to buy banks’ illiquid assets.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Longtime Bank of America Corp shareholder Jerry Finger launched on Monday his formal campaign to strip Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis of his job as chairman, saying the bank took too much risk by acquiring Merrill Lynch & Co.

The trouble with the economy is that the banks aren't lending. The reality: The economy is in trouble because American consumers and businesses took on way too much debt and are now collapsing under the weight of it. As consumers retrench, companies that sell to them are retrenching, thus exacerbating the problem. The banks, meanwhile, are lending. They just aren't lending as much as they used to. Also the shadow banking system (securitization markets), which actually provided more funding...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Monday it had no plans to purchase new corporate jets or build an airport hangar until it has repaid the funds it got through the U.S. governments Troubled Asset Relief Program ...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The world is in a dire economic crisis, but no recovery is possible until the financial sector is cleaned up, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.

Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman said in remarks published on Monday that the latest U.S. Treasury bailout program is nearly certain to fail, triggering a sense of personal despair.

Virginia Hammerness says that the people running Bank of America right now are "a bunch of idiots." But Hammerness is not just another angry stockholder. Her grandfather was A.P. Giannini, the founder of Bank of America.

he bankrupt, seized and 'under investigation' Washington Mutual bank, which saw some operations forcibly sold off to JPMorgan Chase in 2008, is suing the agency that guarantees your deposits ... And that agency is running low on funds.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Growth Properties Inc remained in talks on Sunday with bondholders it was trying to persuade to accept reduced terms, The Wall Street Journal reported.

HONG KONG -- World stock markets soared Monday ahead of a U.S. announcement to purge as much as $1 trillion in toxic bank assets and as Japan signaled more stimulus measures to resuscitate the world's second-largest economy.

TEL AVIV -- David Stevens, a veteran of the mortgage industry, will be appointed to lead the Federal Housing Administration within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, media reports say. The FHA insures mortgage lenders against home-mortgage...

The nation's community banks could play a key role in spurring an economic recovery, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today, as he encouraged them to make loans so long as they can do so prudently and "not to let fear drive"...