Free Republic

There are more rumblings from the Jackson Hole central banker party going on in Wyoming. Central bankers from Japan and the U.K. predicted their new campaigns to encourage expansion will work, sustaining support for global growth even as the Federal Reserve considers a reduction in stimulus. As the annual gathering of central bankers and economists in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, drew to a close yesterday, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said his souped-up asset-buying “has started to exert effects” on the world’s third-largest economy. Bank of England Deputy Governor Charlie Bean said the U.K.’s pledge this month to avoid raising...

Here are the minutes of the most recent FOMC meeting. Federal Reserve officials were “broadly comfortable” with Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s plan to start reducing bond buying later this year if the economy improves, with a few saying tapering might be needed soon, minutes of their last meeting show. In other words, it was a hawkish set of minutes pointing to tapering. The reaction in the US Treasury 10 year yield? ust10082113 And agency MBS prices fell about 12 basis points. mbs082113 And the globe is awash in blood (as in rising sovereign yields). wbm082113 Here is a photo of...

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), mortgage applications declined 4.56 from the previous week. mbastata082113 Most of the decline in mortgage applications was refinancing applications. They fell 7.72% from the previous and have fallen since May 1st when Treasury and mortgage rates began to rise. mbarefirates Mortgage purchase applications rose 1.2% from the previous week. And purchase applications have fallen since May 1st despite today’s report. mbapurchasefreddierate Existing home sales rose faster than expected at a rate of 6.5% versus the expectation of 1.4%. ehs082113 Of course, 60% of home sales are all cash and many are foreign and...

Richmond's controversial plan to seize underwater mortgages through eminent domain includes loans for at least two homes purchased for over $1 million as well as other high-end properties - a revelation that appears to undermine the city's argument that the plan would combat blight. The city is pursuing mortgages with balances ranging from $98,000 to $1.12 million, according to data collected by Marc Joffe, an analyst who received the property addresses, loan balances, offer amounts and other information through a California public records request and shared them with The Chronicle. --SNIP-- Eminent domain is the seizure of private property for...

In their efforts to promote the re-election of Barack Obama, our nation's premier law enforcement agencies presented false data to the American public about a "crackdown" on mortgage fraud. Fox News reports: The Justice Department and FBI have quietly acknowledged they grossly overstated the scope of a mortgage fraud crackdown, which the administration heralded with much fanfare a few weeks before last year's presidential election. According to a memo circulated by the FBI and a correction posted online by the Justice Department, the number of defendants, the number of victims and the size of the losses are, in reality, a...

Home sales from Los Angeles to Charleston, South Carolina that are priced at more than $1 million are gaining at triple the pace of the broader market, according to real estate research firm DataQuick Inc. According to Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an architect of Clinton’s housing policy (The National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream), wealthy purchasers, helped by gains in equities, are diving into real estate a year after a recovery began in the housing market when less-well-heeled buyers rushed to take advantage of record-low...

First off, I welcome President Barack Obama’s call to shutter mortgage giants (and giant pains in the public arse) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many conservatives and libertarians have been beating that drum since 2008 and before, back when Obama was voting present on regulation of Fannie/Freddie and taking more in donations from them than all but one lawmaker. Now, it seems, we can work together on this project, as Obama pushed a Senate plan to close Fannie and Freddie during an economic address in Arizona: But as home prices rise, we can’t just re-inflate a housing bubble. That’s the...

President Obama will urge Congress to shutter Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-giants bailed out by the government in 2008, as part of a strategy to buffer taxpayers from future housing market downturns. In a speech Tuesday in Phoenix, Obama will call for transitioning the business model of Fannie and Freddie into a system where "private capital must be wiped out before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee," a senior administration official said. Obama will also renew his calls for sweeping mortgage refinancing legislation when he travels to Phoenix Tuesday. Arizona's desert capital was the epicenter...

President Obama on Tuesday will for the first time insist that any future housing system in the United States makes 30-year mortgages widely available to borrowers, senior administration officials said, preserving a linchpin of the American economy but also continuing to expose taxpayers to risk from another housing meltdown. (Snip) That will require, officials said, some form of government guarantee that means lenders will be reimbursed by taxpayers in the event of a housing catastrophe like the one that occurred several years ago. Traveling to Phoenix on Tuesday, Obama is planning to call for a new

Here is the written statement from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The Fed Funds Target remains unchanged. fedfundstarget The Taylor Rule, believe it or not, called for a LOWERING of the Fed Funds Target. tayloru;e073113 The Federal Reserve said it will maintain its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases and persistently low inflation could hamper the expansion. fedbal073113 The 10 year Treasury rate rose this morning, then fell on The Fed’s announcement. ust10073113 The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a similar reaction. dow073113 The announcement said that The Fed will remain accommodative until the labor market...

According to the weekly Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) mortgage application survey released this morning, mortgage applications drop 3.7% from the previous week. mbastats073113 Mortgage purchase applications fell 3.43% from the previous week. And since May 1st, purchase applications have fallen with rising mortgage rates (the Mortgage Bankers 30 year effective rate). mbapurchmayday073113 The longer term view of purchase applications (and the MBA mortgage rate index) reveals the zone of slow/no growth in purchase applications since June 2010. mbapltrtes And if I overlay the national homeownership rate on the MBA mortgage purchase application index, we can the relationship, until 2010. Since...

Obama had lofty goals of helping 4 million Americans keep their homes with his Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP). Here are some quick facts:   HAMP modified 1.2 million mortgages (70% less than the target) 306,000 re-defaults Another 88,000 at risk The re-default rate is an alarming 30% The re-default rate of those in since 2009 is 46% CNNMoney has additional details in Watchdog: Borrowers in Obama housing program re-defaulting.   Borrowers who received help through the government's main foreclosure prevention program are re-defaulting on their mortgages at alarming rates, a federal watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.  Nearly 1.2 million...

MALAGA, Spain, Jul 28 (IPS) - "You live there for free, don't you?" asked a woman as she passed by the Buenaventura "corrala", a community in a building in this southern Spanish city occupied since February by families evicted from their homes for falling behind in their mortgage payments due to unemployment. "We don't want any handouts. We want to pay, through a social rent scheme," replied 42-year-old Yuli Fajardo, who was living in a tent before she found shelter along with some 40 other people in one of the 13 spacious apartments in this four-storey block of flats in...

The Dodd-Frank banking bill is slowly unraveling. “Concerned that tougher mortgage rules could hamper the housing recovery, regulators are preparing to relax a key plank of the rules proposed after the financial crisis (Dodd-Frank). The watchdogs, which include the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., want to loosen a proposed requirement that banks retain a portion of the mortgage securities they sell to investors, according to people familiar with the situation.“ Dodd-Frank required that issuers should retain 5% of all mortgage-backed securities issued without government backing. So, regultors are considering lowering the skin in the game requirement). Congress directed...

I am speaking at the Cleveland Fed on September 19th concerning “The New Housing Finance System: Are We There Yet?” But with the mortgage market shrinking, I may not have to speak at the conference. mbastats072413 According to the Mortgage Bankers Association weekly survey, mortgage purchase applications fell 2.07% from the preceding week. mbapurchase072413 Mortgage rates (using Bankrate’s 30 year fixed-rate index) have been generally rising since May 1st (pink box), but falling since July 5th (red box). But even with falling mortgage rates, mortgage purchase applications fell last week and have been generally falling since July 5th. mbapurchmayday1 The...

Bank of America Corp.’s shareholder equity declined in the second quarter as the company’s bond portfolio sustained the biggest hit from rising interest rates among top lenders. The second-biggest U.S. bank by assets reported a $4.22 billion drop in a measure of equity that includes changes in bond holdings, currency translations and pension adjustments. The bulk was from unrealized losses in the securities portfolio, including a $5.73 billion decline in the value of government-backed mortgage securities. It is no mystery as to why BofA lost money. Between April 1st and June 30th, agency MBS took a beating (particularly after May...

U.S. housing starts unexpectedly fell in June to the lowest level in almost a year. hs071713 Mortgage applications dropped 2.61% from the preceding week. However, mortgage PURCHASE applications actually rose slightly 0.5%. mbapurchase071713 And as you can see, the Bankrate 30 year fixed-rate average mortgage rate fell last week. Over the long term, we are still stuck at purchase application levels from the mid 1990s. mbaprchlt071713 Of course, median household income in real terms has been falling which doesn’t bode well for the size of the pool of good quality borrowers. household-income-real1-13a Mortgage refinancing fell 4.19% from the preceding week...

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will have a Q&A following the release on the Fed’s FOMC minutes today at 2pm EST. Here are the minutes. Quick summary of the last FOMC meeting: half the voting members want to stop asset purchases later this year. The other half, wait for improving economic conditions. The reaction in the 10 year Treasury yield? t10reaction But prior to his Q&A session, the 10 year Treasury auction went off as expected. trreas10yraux The 10 Year High Yield continues to climb. ust10ihg The 30 year auction is tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Rising Treasury and mortgage rates have been in the news quite a bit recently. Banks have suffered capital losses with the recent rises in rates. According to the Federal Reserve, unrealized gains in bank portfolios plummeted from more than $40 billion at the beginning of the year to about $6 billion, with the most precipitous declines over the past few weeks amid mounting market concern about the “tapering” of the central bank’s bond-buying program. The bright spot in the economy? Rising pending home sales! Pending home sales have been rising quite a bit in recent months. But at the same...

Investors apparently liked today’s jobs report of +195,000 non-farm employment, despite full-time jobs falling by -240,000. wbm070513 And the US Treasury 10 year yield rose about 20 basis points. ust10070513 The Fannie Mae 4% MBS took a dive with the rise in Treasury yields. fn4pr And the duration of the Fannie Mae 4% MBS continues to climb. fn4dur All this does not bode well for mortgage rates. Let’s see how the Freddie Mac US Mortgage Market Survey 30 Year Homeowner Commitment rate does this week. fredconf The US dollar spot rate is up. usdollr070513 Commodities? Gold and silver way down,...