ABA: Report Shows Credit Card Use Expanded in Third Quarter 2019
Credit card use increased in the third quarter of 2019, according to the American Bankers Association’s latest quarterly Credit Card Market Monitor. Seasonally adjusted purchase volumes rose among prime (+0.8% or $3.85/month) and super-prime (+0.2% or $1.07/month) accounts compared to the previous quarter, consistent with solid consumer spending growth during the same period, while subprime…
Federal Reserve: Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages?
Read the full paper here. Abstract: We test for racial discrimination in the prices charged by mortgage lenders. We construct a unique dataset where we observe all three dimensions of a mortgage’s price: the interest rate, discount points, and fees. While we find statistically significant gaps by race and ethnicity in interest rates, these gaps…
Federal Reserve: Evaluating the Success of President Johnson’s War on Poverty
Revisiting the Historical Record Using a Full-Income Poverty Measure Read the full report here. Abstract: We evaluate progress in President’s Johnson’s War on Poverty. We do so relative to the scientifically arbitrary but policy relevant 20 percent baseline poverty rate he established for 1963. No existing poverty measure fully captures poverty reductions based on the…
Census Bureau: Release of Economic Census Data for Island Areas Begins
The U.S. Census Bureau released the first statistics from the 2017 Economic Census of Island Areas. Island and local area estimates are now available for American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI). The data for Puerto Rico will be released in December of 2020. Island and…
FHFA: House Price Index Up 0.2 Percent in November; Up 4.9 Percent from Last Year
U.S. house prices rose in November, up 0.2 percent from the previous month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). House prices rose 4.9 percent from November 2018 to November 2019. The previously reported 0.2 percent increase for October 2019 was revised upward to 0.4 percent. For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly…
HUD and Census Bureau: Residential Construction Activity Report for December 2019
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Census Bureau jointly announced the following new residential construction statistics for December 2019. Building Permits Privately owned housing units authorized by building permits in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,416,000. This is 3.9 percent (±1.6 percent) below the revised…
ABA: Bank Economists Foresee Continued Economic Growth, Stable Interest Rates
The U.S. economy will continue to grow, add jobs and support wage gains in 2020 and beyond, according to the latest forecast of the American Bankers Association Economic Advisory Committee. There is broad agreement among the group’s 15 chief economists from some of North America’s largest banks, however, that the rate of growth is moderating….
EDA: Indiana University and EDA Launch New USA Opportunity Zones Tool
Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), Indiana University (IU) and its Kelley School of Business announced the launch of the USA Opportunity Zones tool. This new web-based tool will help more than 390 EDA-designated Economic Development Districts (EDDs) across the nation, as well as local economic and community developers and investors, target…
ABA: Consumer Delinquencies Mixed in Third Quarter of 2019
Consumer credit delinquencies were mixed in the third quarter of 2019, with delinquencies falling for bank cards (credit cards provided by banks) and rising for the composite index of closed-end loans, according to results from the American Bankers Association’s Consumer Credit Delinquency Bulletin. Overall, delinquencies rose in eight of the 11 categories tracked by ABA…
FHFA: Nearly 4.4 Million Homeowners Helped Since Conservatorship
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today released its third quarter 2019 Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report, which shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) completed 26,475 foreclosure prevention actions in the third quarter of 2019, bringing the total number of foreclosure prevention actions to 4,381,036 since September 2008. The report also shows that 37 percent of loan modifications…