United States

Last week in the lead up to the FOMC meeting, I went through why I believed this meeting would mark a shift away from the QE regime. And while the Fed did not taper, indeed we are seeing a greater emphasis on forward guidance as a policy…

One could argue that home-buyers are ignoring higher rates, but that doesn't seem likely. Is this spike driven by capitulating buyers who had been waiting on the sidelines for mortgage rates to drop? That strategy had certainly worked in…

Realizing that the Larry Summers nomination as the next Fed chairman was going to face some tough opposition in Congress, the president decided to pick someone else. Of course the next obvious candidate is Janet Yellen. There could be…

This is crazy. John Carney tells us that not only are homes now growing increasingly less affordable, but the psychology of the US housing market is changing to one of the fear of being priced out. Frankly, I can't believe we are here…

We've had a great deal of movement in the NAR US Housing Affordability Index recently. The index is meant to measure homebuyers' ability to finance house purchases and given some recent events, it's worth taking a look at what the index is…

Both Bill Gross of PIMCO and Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs do not believe the weak jobs report will be enough to cause the Fed to call off its tapering of large scale asset purchases.

The U.S. Job Situation Summary was released this morning at 830EDT and the headline number of 169,000 jobs added to non-farm payrolls was just below consensus. Moreover, the unemployment rate dipped to 7.3%. Nonetheless, the reaction to the…

Based on the data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis here is a single chart that shows credit growth in the US is continuing to decline while the Fed's balance sheet is expanding.

The P/E ratio is a statistic that, while all-encompassing, can be misleading in determining under- and overvaluation. Nonetheless regarding valuation it can be a useful guide in context.

The dollar is broadly higher against the major currencies, with the Swedish krona and euro suffering the most. Poor retail sales in Sweden and unexpected weakness in the German labor market report (unemployment rose 7k vs the consensus…