The manager of the world’s largest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., Bill Gross, recently outlined a proposal whereby homeowners with fixed mortgages backed up by the two mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could refinance their current mortgages which are based on an interest rate of 6 percent, to current mortgage rates, [...]
The latest unemployment figures released by the US Labor Department report that the number of people filing for unemployment benefits increased by an unexpectedly high figure of 500,000 during the week ending on the 14th of August 2010. A substantial increase in the number of people claiming benefits under the current federal extensions to the [...]
A recent study conducted by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) on the 600,000+ foreclosures that took place in California following the economic crisis also considered the demographics of the foreclosures, and reported that 48 percent of foreclosures had been on Latinos, while Black Americans accounted for a further eight percent of the foreclosures. The [...]
A long term study spanning 9 years that was conducted on over 30,000 middle-aged and elderly Swedish women found that eating high quality chocolate in moderation had a dramatic effect of reducing the risk of heart failure, reported an article recently featured in an online journal of the American Heart Association. The high quality chocolate [...]
Latest figures released by Bankrate Inc., following their 2010 Closing Costs Survey indicate that the costs involved with closing on a home have increased across the US, with New York topping the list as the most expensive state in which to close on a home. Other states or cities that featured on this list of [...]
The latest reports from within Congress seem to indicate that the ‘Americans Want to Work Act’ or S.3706 unemployment extension bill presented by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has not been included in the Senate’s schedule. This new bill proposes to extend the current 99 weeks’ worth of Federal Unemployment Benefits given to the unemployed by [...]
As the Obama administration and Congress push for tougher regulation of for-profit colleges, the Federal Education Department has formulated a strategy based on student loans repayment rates which proposes to cut federal funding of for-profit colleges that fail to perform. For-profit colleges, which currently depend on federal funding for up to 90 percent of their [...]
Colorado has become the latest state to pass a law capping the APR at which payday lenders are allowed to lend money to customers. Although some states have banned payday lending outright, other states such as Colorado have opted to regulate the industry further, by limiting the APR at which payday lenders are allowed to [...]
After having received almost $150 billion in bailout money from the Obama administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still continue to post losses, with the combined losses of these two mortgage giants in the last quarter being somewhere in the region of $9 billion. However, a decision with regard to the future of these two [...]
Presidential Economic Advisor Laura Tyson highlighted the correlation between education and unemployment during a discussion on ABC’s ‘This Week’ recently, which focused on the unemployment problem and the proposed Tier 5 unemployment extension. She pointed out that the majority of America’s 14.6 million unemployed people were actually high school dropouts. “The unemployment problem is primarily [...]
