Posts Tagged ‘mortgage banking’

I want to take this opportunity to thank you all very much for your interest in my daily blog and economics. All of you enrich my life in many ways and I am profoundly grateful. I wish you and yours the very best in 2015. May it be a year of full employment, good decisions,…

Last Friday’s November labor report reinforces the notion that the economy really is improving. Payroll growth has averaged 241,000/month year-to-date, a 24% improvement over last year. Yet private sector wage gains are up a measly 2.1% year-over-year, despite the strong wage gains of 0.4% last month. Significantly, last month’s “strong” wage gains translate into an…

With Q3 Japanese GDP growth coming in at -0.4%, Japan is back in recession for the third time since the end of the Great Recession. Amazingly, since the start of 2010, Japan has been in recession 47% of the time and Japanese GDP is now back where it was in Q4 2008. All too predictably,…

President Obama’s looming decision to grant amnesty to millions of illegals via Executive Order following a political drubbing is incomprehensible. It suggests Obama believes he can’t pass immigration reform through legislation, and is willing to deprive the next president the chance to do so in bipartisan fashion, something critically needed given the magnitude of the…

The Friday File: Between 1976 and 2000, Americans used an average of 20.3 vacation days/year. Since then, it’s steadily declined and now stands at just 16 days/year. As some of the unused days cannot be paid out, banked or rolled over, Americans lose 169 million vacation days/year. Worse, this lack of vacationing costs the economy…

The final reading of Q2 US GDP growth was just pegged at an annual rate of 4.6%. With this, US GDP growth has exceeded 3.5% for three of the past four quarters. Moreover, consumer spending is inching up, government headwinds — especially from Washington — are declining, and private investment and in particular commercial fixed…