Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the U.S. government “will never” lose its sterling credit rating despite big budget deficits and a newly increased debt limit that now tops $14 trillion.
Geithner says in an interview broadcast Sunday that in times of economic crisis, international investors will continue to buy U.S. Treasury bonds because the bonds are a safe investment.
The Obama administration’s proposed Small Business Lending Fund looks attractive to local bankers.
They can’t help but wonder, however, if the plan’s beauty is more than skin deep.
The program, outlined by President Barack Obama on Tuesday, would utilize $30 billion of remaining Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds and make it available to banks with assets of less than $10 billion. Those banks account for 50 percent of small business loans nationwide.
Bank of America refinance mortgage rates have been below 5% for the entire year of 2010. At the present time 30 year home loans are at 4.85%. It is very interesting that the 30 year fixed-rate mortgage has been in a very tight range between 4.8% and 5% for the entire year. Once it breaks out of this range you can expect some wild movements.
Many analysts have predicted that mortgage interest rates are going to rise starting in the spring of 2010. There’s a very good possibility that we are seeing the calm before the storm as mortgage rates have moved very little since the beginning of January. Once we start to see movement there could be wild fluctuations in the 30 year fixed mortgage rate.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s home loan delinquencies rose 4.2 per cent in October and the companies modified more mortgages under President Barack Obama’s anti-foreclosure program, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said.
The number of borrowers at least 60 days behind on home loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rose to 1.65 million in October from 1.59 million in September, and has more than doubled since a year earlier, FHFA said in a report today. Delinquencies of 60 days or more as a share of mortgages serviced by the companies rose to 5.4 percent, from 5.2 per cent.
Hidden details about the interest charged on partly-paid or overdue credit card balances is unfairly costing customers, consumer advocate group Choice says.
A study of 20 credit card companies showed the amount of interest charged on a credit card can depend as much on when a provider stops and starts charging interest and how fairly they apply interest-free days as the actual advertised interest rate.
American Express, Bankwest, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ and Westpac were named as the most unfair credit card providers.
Stocks in once-beleaguered regional banks rose sharply Thursday after their loan books showed more evidence of returning to health, boosting investors’ confidence the worst of the economic crisis losses are over.
KeyCorp (KEY), Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) and Comerica Inc. (CMA) each heartened investors, despite posting losses, by reporting flat or lower quarterly provisions as compared to three months ago. Provisions are dollars that banks set aside from earnings to absorb current and future loan losses. Fifth Third and Comerica reported lower actual losses from loans, while KeyCorp’s realized losses rose.
Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. lender, may report its third loss in the past five quarters as its new chief executive officer tallies costs from consumer loan defaults and repaying bailout funds.
Results for the final three months of 2009 are due tomorrow, and analysts’ estimates of a potential loss range as high as $4.9 billion by Sanford C. Bernstein’s John MacDonald. The bank’s largest rival, JPMorgan Chase & Co., last week called its own fourth quarter “a little disappointing,” even though profit more than quadrupled, as the retail unit posted a loss and the firm boosted consumer loan reserves by $1.9 billion.
Rates for 30-year home loans edged lower for the second straight week, a report said today, but remained above last month’s record lows.
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage was 5.06 percent this week, down from 5.09 percent a week earlier, mortgage company Freddie Mac said.
Rates dropped to a record low of 4.71 percent in early December, pushed down by an aggressive government campaign to reduce consumers’ borrowing costs, but then rose steadily for the rest of the month.
The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan will decide whether the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched primarily after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. In August, a federal judge ordered that the information be released.
The U.S. unexpectedly lost 85,000 jobs in December, supporting Federal Reserve forecasts that a labor market recovery will take time and making it more likely interest rates will stay near zero for the next six months.
Payrolls fell last month after a revision showed a gain of 4,000 in November, the first in almost two years. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected no change in December. The jobless rate held at 10 percent.