July 30, 2024 For most of last year, it was apparent that the Federal Reserve wanted the economy to stop growing so fast. Though you would never hear them say that they were trying to force us into a recession, certainly forecasters were predicting a recession. But the recession never came as the economy and […]
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June 27, 2023 Just about every market analyst has been predicting a recession sometime in 2023. Well, here we are ending the first half of the year and we have seen very few signs of a recession. To the contrary, as of last month the economy had added almost 1.5 million jobs in the first […]
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June 13, 2023 When a kitten or puppy waves their paws at us, it is considered major cuteness in action. When the Federal Reserve Board is faced with a decision regarding the “pausing” of interest rate hikes, there is no cuteness involved – just a bunch of hemming and hawing (not pawing). So, the Fed […]
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June 13, 2023 Fifteen months ago, the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee met and raised short-term interest rates for the first time in almost four years. Since then, there has been an automatic rise in short-term rates each time they have met – ten times in all. In a previous commentary we spoke about […]
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May 23, 2023 For a year we have had to deal with rising interest rates and lower home affordability. Much of this was expected after record-low interest rates helped fuel a real estate purchasing frenzy which resulted in prices increasing by double digits for the past few years. Fast forward to today, and home prices […]
Read More May 16, 2023 Fannie Mae’s economists say a recession is coming. So does the Mortgage Bankers Association. As a matter of fact, 58% of economists are predicting a recession coming in the near future. Some even are predicting that the recession has started in the second quarter, but most are now expecting the start to […]
Read More May 9, 2023 It has been a crazy first quarter. It is amazing that the economy produced approximately one million jobs during the first quarter of the year. Everyone knew that the pace of job creation was not likely to continue, especially since we have already replaced the number of jobs lost during the pandemic-induced […]
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April 18, 2023 We are now over one-quarter of the way through the year. We will soon have the first measure of economic growth for the first quarter of the year – just in time for the Federal Reserve to meet again and decide whether to raise short-term rates again. Thus, we feel that it […]
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April 4, 2023 The employment sector of the economy has been nothing short of amazing. Close to full employment, we lost an amazing number of jobs during the pandemic – close to 25 million. By July of last year, we had recovered those jobs and it was expected that the pace of job creation would […]
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