June 2009 - Around The Web

“The biggest obstacle to Volcker’s reform agenda is Summers” > There is a long article at Bloomberg very much worth reading about Tall Paul: . Consider the following: “If Volcker is at one end of the spectrum arguing for tougher financial rules, Summers...

The — which was released by the BLS today and shows how much time people spend doing everything from working to taking care of their kids and watching TV — isn’t the sort of survey that changes much from year to year. But tucked in this year’s survey...

New York Fed purchases $22.3 billion net ($23.8 billion gross) in agency mortgage-backed securities

submits: Standard & Poor’s believes that global banks’ biggest problems are behind them and that the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009 marked the bottom. “While U.S. banks in virtually every major market are feeling the severe effects...

Bernanke defended the Fed's role in BofA's talks with regulators about the Merrill deal as lawmakers questioned the central bank's actions.

MORTGAGE RATES MOSTLY FLAT AMID MIXED ECONOMIC NEWS McLean, VA - Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 5.42 percent with an average...

Commercial paper outstanding for the week fell by a sharp $47.5b and totals $1.15 trillion, the lowest since at least Nov ‘00 that data is out and down from the record high of $2.22 trillion in July ‘07. The decline was led by a $44.3b decline in nonfinancial...

Fascinating chart showing the total level of Equity in Household Real Estate from 1952 - 2009. > click for bigger chart > Source :

New York Fed purchases $3.249 billion in Treasury coupons

The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced extensions of and modifications to a number of its liquidity programs.

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Posted By: Hundreds of mortgage industry representatives, from small and large shops, sent in stories of botched appraisals, of allegedly negligent appraisal management companies, and of lost deals that are so necessary to recovery in this fragile housing...

submits: Some juicy details are emerging about the Government’s meddling in Bank of America’s (BAC) takeover of Merrill Lynch. This issue hasn’t gone away quietly, as many skeptics thought it would (myself included). Potentially Huge Break – Fed E-mails...

submits: A primary theme of behavioral economics is that consumers are poorly informed and otherwise unable to wisely consider the important decisions in their lives. As behavioral economics has gained some academic acceptance, it is no surprise that...

Earlier this week, Charles W. Calomiris , Stanley D. Longhofer and William Miles wrote in that the wealth effect from housing on consumption should be small. Atif Mian and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business respond that their...

On Monday, we looked at the impact of the Exhaustion Rate on Continuing Unemployment Claims (See and ). Those charts and tables made it clear that Continuing Unemployment Claims were dropping not due to folks getting jobs, but simply using up all of their...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - One of the lessons that the global financial crisis has taught the world is that the top reserve currencies should be kept stable, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Wednesday.

As decided at the latest , authorities around the world are devising micro- and macro-prudential reforms in order to strengthen the resilience not only of single financial institutions but of the entire financial system by extending oversight to all important...

GMAC is suspending wholesale financing for certain dealers it considers to be too risky to lend to, a move that could push some dealers out of business and hurt Chrysler sales.

The bank’s new projection showed that the Russian economy would contract by 7.9 percent this year and not recover to precrisis levels until at least 2012.