mortgages

Below is the weekly commentary from Comstock Partners. The softening in the economy that we have been looking for is now becoming a reality as a wide sampling of the latest monthly or weekly economic releases clearly indicates that a…

Existing house sales in the US fell 2.2% month over month in May to an annualized 5.66 million rate from the upwardly-revised 5.79 million rate in April. Note that analysts polled by Reuters expected sales to rise to a 6.12 million rate.…

Meredith Whitney was a guest host on CNBC at 8AM ET talking about an anticipated housing double dip. The videos are below. A few comments first.  Whitney was late to the recovery party in 2009 in my view. But I found the recent Rip…

Fannie and Freddie Cost of Fannie And Freddie Keeps Rising - NYTimes.com Related Posts May 2010: Banks Making Shed Loads But Fannie And Freddie May Be “Losing Money as a Matter of Policy” Jan 2010: Manipulating mortgages Sep…

By Richard Davis of Consumer Metrics Institute, Inc. Below is an addendum to the update sent out on Tuesday, addressing new data reflecting changes in consumer behavior concerning their debt: The Consumer Metrics Institute's Personal…

David Rosenberg, Chief Economist at Gluskin Scheff, has the following graph showing the dramatic drop in mortgage applications for home purchases in the most recent report from the Mortgage Bankers Association.   It is interesting to…

I expected this (hat tip Scott). Goldman Sachs is hoping to avoid the Securities and Exchange Commission’s charge of fraud by reaching a settlement on a lesser offence and agreeing to a fine of hundreds of millions of dollars, according…

I still see this phenomenon as a major risk to US growth due to the credit writedowns associated with it. However, the vast majority of house price losses are behind us. If house prices double-dip as they appear to be doing now, the losses…

Look back at the prepared testimony that Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO offered to the US Senate two days ago.  In it he clearly defines what Goldman Sachs public purpose is – what its societal function is.  Are they fulfilling…

Below are the prepared remarks of Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein for his testimony tomorrow before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. Fabrice Tourre will also testify. Chairman Levin, Ranking Member Coburn and Members of the…