The bond market rout appears to have settled as various Fed speeches have walked back the idea of tapering QE. The damage has been done in many places, however, regardless of whether QE stays at full throttle $85 billion or drops just slightly to $70 or $65 billion a few months hence. The hardest hit seems to have landed in [...]
For Bernanke and QE 3 (the MBS strand) there was only good news in Q1 ’13 GDP. Residential housing “investment”, i.e., housing-related construction, was revised upward to a 14% growth rate from 12.1%. That meant the frothy real estate “markets” provided 0.34% of the 1.8% growth rate in Q1 GDP. Unfortunately, that was less than the 0.41% provided in Q4, [...]
December sales of new homes was disappointing in that the adjusted pace did not keep up with previous months. From May 2012 through October 2012, year-over-year increases in new sales levels stayed consistently above 20%. That drove expectations that the trend in residential real estate had finally turned. Given available data, that does seem to be the case. Economists and [...]
"More than 17 percent of all FHA loans were delinquent in September, according to data on the agency’s website." I believe that number was 9% last quarter. Of course not all delinquencies turn into bad loans, or full-on NPL's, but both the trend and absolute level should be alarming. The major problem, however, seems to be the mortgage guarantee business [...]
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