Month: June 2020

As part of the CARES Act, lenders that allow borrowers to defer debt payments may not report those payments as late to credit-reporting firms. As such, borrower FICO scores are no longer as good at separating good borrowers from bad.…

New CDC estimates suggest more than 20 million persons living in the US have contracted Covid-19, roughly 10 times the official count. This means even with all the interventions aimed at reducing Sars-Cov-2 illnesses, the death rate is about 0.6%,…

The Friday File: The inflation-adjusted cost of the Mercury space program was $140 million/seat/flight. The Gemini program that followed was $120 million/seat/flight and the Apollo missions were a hefty $400 million/seat/flight. The reusable, and cheaper, Space Shuttle came in at…

While first-time unemployment claims fell 60,000 last week to 1.48 million, they’re barely down from 1.54 million two weeks ago and 1.57 million three weeks ago. Prior to Covid-19, the record high was 695,000! Contemporaneously, the number of unemployed fell…

In 2010/11, US cities grew 1.07% while suburbs grew 0.91%, a difference of 0.16 percentage points. That gap peaked at 0.25 in 2011/12 when cities grew 1.17% and suburbs 0.92%. The growth gap persisted for three more years but narrowed.…

While US equities continue recovering lost ground, markets may be discounting two key risks. The first, a powerful fall Covid-19 wave, let alone the current rise in new case counts in AZ, CA, FL, TX and elsewhere. Second, markets appear…

Between 3/1/20-5/31/20, 79 million student loans entered forbearance, up from 18.2 million between 3/1/20-4/30/20. Over the same periods, deferred auto loans rose to 7.3 million from 3.6 and credit card deferrals hit 11.5 million from 8. Mortgages increased to 5.5…

The Friday File: When Bob Barker began hosting “The Price is Right” in 1972, contestants generally bid 5% to 10% below the market price. That remained the case through the early 1980s. From then through 2010, bid quality progressively deteriorated…

We are currently digging out of an economic recession and a suppression of economic activity resulting from government mandated Sheltering-in-Place. With suppression ending, the first part of the recovery, the most powerful part, is now occurring. But weakened corporate and…

Since QE1’s arrival during the Great Recession, the Fed has guided interest rates by buying bonds and offering forward guidance about when they expect to raise rates. The Fed is now considering adding another tool, yield curve control, where they…