Thursday, June 12, 2008
WASHINGTON - Retail sales jumped by the largest amount in six months in May as 57 million economic stimulus payments helped offset the headwinds buffeting consumers.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that retail sales soared 1 percent last month, the biggest increase since November. A wide variety of retailers enjoyed a good month, including the biggest increase at department stores and other general merchandise stores in a year.
The May increase was double what economists had been expecting and indicated that the economy is getting a major boost from the $50 billion in economic stimulus payments the government sent out in May, just under half of the total stimulus aimed at consumers.
The Bush administration is hoping the stimulus payments will help offset the gloom from a prolonged slump in housing, a severe credit crisis, soaring energy bills and rising layoff notices and help the country avert a deep recession.
Highlighting the pressures on the job market, the Labor Depa...
| Posted by maricela at 11:24 AM |
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Monday, May 12, 2008
The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.
How can this be? For starters, a bottom does not mean that prices are about to return to the heady days of 2005. That probably won't happen for another 15 years. It just means that the trend is no longer getting worse, which is the critical factor.
Most people forget that the current housing bust is nearly three years old. Home sales peaked in July 2005. New home sales are down a staggering 63% from peak levels of 1.4 million. Housing starts have fallen more than 50% and, adjusted for population growth, are back to the trough levels of 1982.
Furthermore, residential construction is close to 15-year lows at 3.8% of GDP; by the fourth quarter of this year, it will probably hit the lowest level ever. So what's going to stop the ...
| Posted by maricela at 5:32 PM |
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Monday, December 17, 2007
McLean, VA - Can a custom made video posted to YouTubeT keep troubled borrowers from losing their homes to fraud artists? Freddie Mac aims to find out.
One of the nation's largest investors in residential mortgages, Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) decided to produce an Internet video dramatizing a common foreclosure fraud scheme after a new survey found one-in-four delinquent borrowers go to the Internet before their bank or lender for information about avoiding foreclosure. Freddie Mac's anti-fraud video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/AvoidFraud.
Freddie Mac's two-minute YouTube video uses professional actors to demonstrate how con artists can:
Get copies of foreclosure notices at City Hall or a county courthouse;
Persuade distressed borrowers to give up the deeds in exchange for suspicious promises to solve their financial problems;
Use the deeds to secure new loans for themselves; and,
Let the new loans go into foreclosure, which means the homeowners looking ...
| Posted by maricela at 11:24 AM |
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Thursday, November 08, 2007
Productivity Surges by 4.9 Percent Rate
from The Associated Press
WASHINGTON November 7, 2007, 5:13 p.m. ET · Worker productivity surged in the summer at the fastest pace in four years while wage pressures eased.
The Labor Department reported that productivity - the amount of output per hour of work - jumped at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the July-September quarter. That was more than twice the 2.2 percent rise in the second quarter and was the fastest surge in worker efficiency since 2003.
At the same time, wage pressures eased. Unit labor costs dropped at an annual rate of 0.2 percent, the best showing in more than a year.
Both outcomes were far better than expected and should relieve some concerns that a surge in productivity that began in the mid-1990s was in danger of being reversed.
The slight drop in wage pressures was especially welcome after hefty increases over the past four quarters. Rising wages are good for workers. But if higher wages are not accom...
| Posted by maricela at 10:21 AM |
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